Clogged Arteries

The latest casino impact to be wrapped in pretty paper and presented to the surrounding communities as if it were actually a gift has been discovered on a new blog. This blog claims to tell THE TRUTH about a Middleboro Casino even while the blog's owner has yet to reveal THE TRUTH about their identity.

The posting in question boasts that a casino will actually enhance the current Pilgrim nuclear emergency evacuation route by adding additional lanes to Rte 44 and eliminating the rotary, and therefore allowing traffic to move twice as fast.

As usual, the blog neglects to mention that WE will be paying for this infrastructure. Once again NOT A GIFT.

But here's the part that just sort of rubbed me the wrong way:

...the Resort Casino is not in the evacuation area, so people can stop in and stay if they wish to.

Something most people probably don't know about me is that I lived in Plymouth for several years. Most of my immediate family live in the Evacuation area. The place I once called home is in sub-area #2, not far from the power plant itself.

You know how we all get those town calendars in our mailbox every year - with the old photographs and ads for local businesses. Well, in Plymouth, we received a town calendar too -except that it was full of emergency planning advice, evacuation routes, instructions on what to do with your pets, where your children would be taken if they were at school or daycare at the time of an event, and instructions for those with special needs. We were strongly encouraged to maintain a stash of Potassium Iodide in our medicine cabinets, and that, due to our proximity to a nuclear power plant, we can get some for free! And, in my old neighborhood, we went about our lives under the shadow of several huge emergency sirens, standing like dark-hooded sentinels on their towering poles.

When I was nine months pregnant with my first child, I was in the living room of my sub-area #2 home when those sirens went off. Not knowing whether it was a drill or not, I experienced some of the terror that might result in the event of a true nuclear emergency. Presented for the first time not only with my own life to protect, but that my baby, the floor of my living room seemed to fall out from under me - as the reality of potential catastrophe crashed in overhead. It is an experience I would not wish on anyone.

Living close to a nuclear power plant, you laugh off the potential danger with your neighbors - because you have to. You have to pretend it will never happen, or that if it does, that somehow it won't be so bad, or that you and your family will be fine. You take a look at the emergency planning calendar when it arrives in your mailbox, then toss it aside to gather dust. Who wants to think about Potassium Iodide when you're just trying to make a living, raise a family and set down roots. A nuclear emergency in your backyard is a difficult thing to think about - and so we in the sub-areas try not to think about it.

But THE TRUTH, take it from me, is that stopping in at a casino is going to be the LAST THING on your mind when you are racing for your life and that of your family AWAY from a nuclear catastrophe.

Brian Giovannoni (chairman of Middleboro's Casino Resort Advisory Committee aka CRAC) - oops... I mean the Mystery Blogger - seems to distastefully imply that, having just lost their homes, everything they own, their way of life and possibly friends, family and even pets in a nuclear accident, the potentially irradiated residents evacuating a hot zone might be in the perfect frame of mind to stare up at a fake waterfall or gamble what's left in their wallets on a rousing game of blackjack.

And, since we're on the subject, let's face it - it's only one extra lane on Rte. 44 that we're really talking about. While emergency personnel would certainly make use of an extra East bound lane, Evacuation traffic is going in one direction - away.

So, after reading Brian's - I mean, the Mystery Blog, I'm left guessing what it is Plymouth sub area #6 residents should thank Middleboro for. That extra lane - or the extra 50,000 people at a casino who'll be jumping onto it before they get there.

You see, while the official Evacuation plan sends the populations of the towns of Plymouth, Carver and Kingston, Duxbury and Marshfield onto multiple roadways around Rte. 44 in an effort to avoid gridlock, a Middleboro casino would, in fact, empty right onto it. And though I also have no doubt that, in the event of a nuclear emergency just two towns over, some hard core gamblers might continue to feed the slots as the band plays on, once word gets around, I have a hunch that most casino patrons are gonna know when to fold 'em, and then start to run.

And so, here you have the Evac plan, purposely attempting to spread out the huge numbers of fleeing residents from five towns onto certain local roadways so that they can get to some much needed emergency shelter in the quickest way possible, while, at the same time, a casino is emptying a population essentially that of Plymouth onto one of them.

Listen Brian - I mean, Mystery Blogger... we in the surrounding communities are quite aware of how little regard Middleboro has had for it's neighbors in it's attempts to foist a casino on our region. So please, please stop dressing up casino impacts as gifts. We don't want your special little 'gifts'. We also don't need any more smug, self-important comments from a callous casino-shilling no-name coward who can't see past the rose colored glasses on his own face. And that's THE TRUTH.