Doris Pendleton Longtime Wiscasset resident, Doris Pendleton

When Doris Pendleton said, "Just give me one reason why I shouldn't vote for this," she thought all kinds of people would jump up and tell her.

No one did.

It was at an informational meeting last month on the $1.5 billion coal gasification plant proposed for Wiscasset by Connecticut-based National RE/sources.

Having lived in Wiscasset since 1948, Mrs. Pendleton knows nearly everyone in town. Ever since that meeting, people have been coming up to her at the post office or on the street and asking her why she is in favor of the plant.

"I'm not," she said Monday morning in a visit to the newspaper office.

"When I stood up at that meeting and said `Just give me a reason why I shouldn't vote for this,' everybody assumed that meant I was in favor of it. I've been getting all kinds of phone calls from people asking why I'm in favor of it, so I want to let people know I am not."

Mrs. Pendleton brought along a flyer she received recently from the Back River Alliance showing a black and white photo of smoke stacks with "Grittiest village in Maine."

"You can have this, she said, "I've already made up my mind. I'm not going to vote for this." She said people have been handing out the flyers in various places in town, including in front of the post office. The return address on the flyer is "Back River Alliance, PO Box 925, Wiscasset." The group opposes the plant.

Referring to the November 6 vote on changing several ordinances to allow the start of the permitting process, Mrs. Pendleton said "I am voting no next month. There are too many unanswered questions. If we vote in favor, we will have no say in the project. This is too good to be true."

She has seen a lot of changes in town in the last 59 years. She offered a list of what was in the village in 1948: five grocery stores, two hardware stores, a drug store, a ladies' shop, a men's shop, a shoe store, two barber shops, a beauty salon, a Ford dealership, lumber company, seed and grain mill, two auto repair shops, a "5 and 10 department store," three restaurants, one bank and "lots of small businesses."

"There have been so many changes in this town - too many," she said.

Referring to the two old schooners that sat at the water's edge for many years, she said, "After the Hesper and Luther Little were removed, White's Island became a big point of interest. Now that's closed off."

She says she worries about the possible dangers to people's health if the plant is built.

"I don't want people to get sick," she said. And, she says, she wonders what the fishermen will do if the barges loaded with coal keep them from fishing in the Sheepscot River.

"I don't blame these towns around us that don't want it. Remember, if this plant gets built, we will have it forever."