The Cheshire, Ohio Project

In 1971, American Electric Power built a coal-burning power plant next to the rural village of Cheshire, Ohio which was 40 times larger than the town itself.  By 1990, it was the single largest source of sulfur dioxide emissions in the country with levels that measured more than 80 times the national average for rural areas.  A cleanup was undertaken.  The results were mixed.  Afterwards, a new, sulfuric acid pollutant began drifting onto the town which caused burning eyes, breathing difficulties, and actual burns on skin and other exposed surfaces.  In 2002 A.E.P. responded to decades of complaints from Cheshire residents by offering to buy up the entire town for 20 million dollars.  Homeowners would get two to three times the appraised value for their properties, but in exchange they would forfeit the right to ever hold A.E.P. accountable for pollution-related health problems.  Most people took the offer, though a few did not.  Between 2003 and 2004, A.E.P. tore down all of the buildings on their newly acquired land and replaced them with a neatly shorn lawn that contained few hints of what had previously been there.  Only a few isolated houses and buildings remained.

I photographed the town once a year during this period of change, between 2002 and 2004.  I then made one final visit five years later, in 2009.  Cheshire remains a village, and a few people still choose to live there.  Some of the photographs from this series are below.  In 2012 this series was featured on National Public Radio’s photo blog.

More about Cheshire, Ohio:

“Sulphuric Acid Mist: Regulating Uncertainties” by Matthew Thurlow, Ecology Law Quarterly, December 2012

http://www.cheshiretransaction.com/

http://www.forgottenoh.com/Cheshire/cheshire.html

http://www.aep.com/search/results.aspx?rel=0&terms=gavin+plant