-Hideous,” “grotesque” and “like massive spikes in a
sci-fi movie,” were some of the kinder phrases residents of
Ellensburg, Wash., employed to describe an addition to their
community.
The addition consisted of 12 power
poles, 110 feet high, erected by Central Washington University
through the center of town. The looming power poles spurred the
formation of a new local group, Citizens for a Beautiful Community.
The group gathered the signatures of more than 3,500 of
Ellensburg’s 12,000 residents in a petition opposing the poles, but
the university board members voted to keep them. Then on April 19,
the citizens’ group filed a lawsuit and the university’s board of
directors voted again, this time deciding to spend an extra $1.2
million to tear down the poles and search for an alternative power
route. “They finally understood that we were not going away,” says
Dale Otto of Citizens for a Beautiful Community.
*Bill Taylor
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Ellensburg wins back its beauty.
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