In addition to being a fiction writer, Kathleen Yasas is also a newspaper columnist and correspondent.
In 2007 Kathleen Yasas joined with other citizens of upstate New York to fight against a power line project presented to the New York State Public Service Commission for approval. The project, proposed by a company called New York Regional Interconnect (NYRI), promised to bring electricity to the New York City area by erecting 130-foot tall electric line towers along 190 miles in upstate New York, an area designated by the Department of Energy to be part of the Mid-Atlantic National Electric Transmission Corridor. The project would have decimated nearly 200 miles of pristine historic and environmentally-sensitive land, would have caused uncounted small businesses along the power line route to close, and would have put hundreds of families out of their homes in the name of progress. Politicians, individual activists, everyday citizens, and the highly organized citizens groups – Communities Against Regional Interconnect (www.caricoalition.org), STOP NYRI (www.nyri.info), and others – stood up to the company, its Canadian investors, and its multi-billion dollar project and said NO. It seemed like a losing battle, but the grassroots soldiers never gave up.
In 2009, three years after the first whisper of the NYRI project made its way across central New York, NYRI threw in the towel and withdrew its application for from the PSC.
Following are articles and letters to the editor written by Kathleen Yasas that appeared in New York newspapers about the power line project.
