A farmer from rural Arkansas--from the Wright-Plum Bayou area of Jefferson County--got up before thirty-five or so other farmers who lived and worked nearby, and told them, "I don't believe this power plant over here belongs to Arkansas Power and Light Co. I think it belongs to some New York concern."

Another farmer stood up and told the gathering that, "I'm definitely against it because I don't think they can burn coal without hurtin' us." And a third farmer put into words the reason why he and thirty-five of his neighbors had taken time off from the business of farming and gathered together at the old school building: "We're trying to organize a group to find out how that power plant is going to affect us...our land...our environment...our livestock...our buildings and machinery."

What they were all concerned about was the coal-fired electric generating plant that Arkansas Power and Light Co. plans to build on the banks of the Arkansas River, about three miles from the homes and farms of the people of Wright, Redfield, Ferda, and Plum Bayou.

The power plant is going to be a 2800 megawatt facility. It will burn 27,400 tons of coal each day, and release into the nearby air (according to AP&L's estimates) 469 tons of sulfur dioxide, 14 tons of particulate matter, and 291 tons of nitrogen oxides each day. That's more than any power plant currently in operation in the United States. The power plant will be, according to the Arkansas State Dept. of Planning, "possibly the worst single source of air pollution in the world." It will certainly be a greater source of pollution than the infamous Four Corners power plant in New Mexico, whose emissions were the only sign of human activity that astronauts Jim Lovell and Buzz Aldrin were able to see from their Gemini XII space capsule.

In the Four Corners area, the residents of that desert region are talking mostly about the effect the power plant is having on the once beautiful vistas that the crystal clear air afforded. In rural Arkansas, residents are talking about the effect which the power plant is going to have on their economic livelihood. Rural Arkansas is cotton and soybean country, and scientific studies have long ago demonstrated the susceptibility of cotton and beans to damage by extremely low levels of sulfur dioxide in the air. The farmers of Wright, Redfield, Ferda, and Plum Bayou don't want to see their means of making a living destroyed by Arkansas Power and Light Co.

Arkansas Power and Light, which sells electricity to most of the state of Arkansas, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Middle South Utilities, Inc. Middle South is a giant utility holding company, which owns 100 per cent of the stock of (in addition to AP&L) Mississippi Power and Light Company, Arkansas-Missouri Power Company, Louisiana Power and Light Company, and New Orleans Public Service Inc. Middle South has its main office in New York City, and it is not run by the people of Arkansas, Missouri, Mississippi, and Louisiana, but by the New York banks and investment companies which have traditionally owned this nation's utility companies.

The New York banks and investment companies aren't the only institutions that own shares of Middle South. They own a lot, but the largest single shareholder of Middle South is Harvard University. Harvard owns 561,000 shares of the company's common stock, and the Harvard Yenching Institute owns another 16,668. At market value, that amounts to about $12,710,000. And, sitting on the Board of Directors of Middle South is former Harvard Treasurer George F. Bennett '33, whose State Street Investment Corp. owns another 350,000 shares of Middle South stock.

For the farmers of Arkansas, the fact that Harvard University and a number of New York and Boston banks can decide to put what might very well be the world's worst single source of pollution right smack in the middle of their fields is a little hard to take. The thirty-five farmers who met in the school house decided that something had to be done about the power plant, and so they organized themselves as a chapter of the only group which has had any success in fighting for the rights of low and moderate income Arkansas, a group called ACORN (Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now).

ACORN is a statewide organization of 4500 low and moderate income families, who are organized into over 38 local community groups from the Ozarks to the Delta. ACORN has been in existence for over three years, and during that time it has, according to one of its members, been "fighting to see to it that the state motto of Arkansas, 'The People Shall Rule,' rings true." Austin Scott of the Washington Post called ACORN "one of the most challenging organizing projects going right now," and went on to write about ACORN that "the name of its game is not welfare, or help for the unfortunate, or social justice, but power--prodding people who never thought they could do it into going after the power they need to influence events that touch their lives."

The problems that ACORN has done something about in the past three years include the following:

I ACORN exposed a property tax system which was overwhelmingly biased against low income property owners, and led a successful effort to reform the property tax system in order to increase the taxes of the wealthy and decrease the taxes of low income Arkansans;

I ACORN's Unemployed Worker's Organizing Committee led a campaign against the abuses of private employment agencies, which forced the state's Labor Dept. to take action against the employment agencies;

I ACORN has fought for and won parks, stop lights, better drainage systems, and numerous other features that help make neighborhoods better places to live, and which have long been the exclusive property of the upper classes in Arkansas;

I ACORN's Vietnam Veteran's Organizing Committee pushed a free tuition for vets bill through the Arkansas General Assembly;

I An ACORN group forced the Fort Smith city directors to pass an amendment on the sewer proposal that saved low-income families $150 each.