Ogle County Newspapers / oglecountynews.com • Friday, October 16, 2020
OGLE COUNTY NEWS
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BUSINESS NEWS
Demmer calls on community to save nuclear plant BY RACHEL RODGERS rrodgers@saukvalley.com State Rep. Tom Demmer, R-Dixon, has created a website dedicated to helping save the Byron Nuclear Power Plant, which, if shuttered, would cost the area 727 jobs and $38 million in annual tax revenue. “The Byron Generating Station is an important cornerstone of the Ogle County economy,” Demmer said. “Not only is the plant home to hundreds of good-paying jobs, it also pays more than $30 million to support schools, public safety and local governments.” A third of Ogle County’s tax revenue comes from Exelon Generator’s Byron plant and in addition to its regular employees, the company hires about 1,200 contractors every 18 months when one of the Byron units goes offline for refueling and maintenance. In August, the company announced plans to close the Byron plant in September 2021, the Dresden plant in Morris that November, and said that the La Salle and Braidwood nuclear stations also were at high risk for premature closure. The plant was licensed for 20 more years but Exelon faces revenue shortfalls in the hundreds of millions of dollars because of declining energy prices and market rules that “allow fossil fuel plants to underbid clean resources,” the company said in a news release announcing the decision. Exelon, which has threatened several times in recent years to close some of its nuclear plants,
Earleen Hinton/Shaw Media
ABOVE LEFT: Exelon’s Byron Generating Station is located on German Church Road, south of Byron. Exelon announced Aug. 27 that station will be retired in September 2021. ABOVE RIGHT: The Illinois Brotherhood of Electrical Workers has created signs showing the union’s support of keeping the station open. said it would continue talks with policymakers on ways to prevent the closures. It pays one of the nation’s highest property tax bills and accounts for most of the county’s nonagricultural economy. Demmer partnered with Byron-based Wave Marketing after the announcement to create savebyron.com and is asking community members “to join their voices to the chorus of local leaders calling for action to prevent the closure of the facility next year.”
The website includes a “Take Action” section with contact information for the governor’s office, as well as the Senate Energy and Public Utilities Committee and the House Energy and Environment Committee. “I’m working with my fellow legislators on both sides of the aisle to try to keep the plant open. This website is a way for the community to find updates, share their comments, and understand how the plant affects our entire area – not only those directly employed there,” Demmer said.
SPORTS COLUMN
Marching band performance helped fill the void O
nce again, I found myself wandering aimlessly around the Oregon sport fields on a Friday night. The initial drawing card was a brilliant orange sun casting its glow over the cornfields just west of Park West. There were a couple of youth baseball games in progress, giving what had been an empty summer, vibrancy to the fall evenings. Then it was Landers-Loomis Field that drew me a couple hundred yards east for investigation of why the lights were on. To my surprise, a full marching band in uniform, cheerleaders and drill team were performing. The only thing missing was football. Maybe the team could have put on an exhibition scrimmage, but to be frank, those are kind of boring unless you have a kid playing. I was craving an actual football game experience, the type with a social fabric woven into it, such as sharing it with like-minded fans at stadiums in Forreston, Polo, Oregon, Stillman, Byron and Rochelle. Every Friday this season was ideal weather – pleasant and dry - for a football game. People like me who have been accustomed to the Friday ritual for decades and decades, have been forced to go through withdrawals. Yeah, I know I sound like a whiner and that
COMMENTARY Andy Colbert
there is more important matters in life than a high school football game. But, for a couple of hours on a beautiful fall evening, there isn’t anything more important to me than a football game. Not any game. I can get by just fine without the colleges and pros, but the high school fare is the best entertainment that money can buy. The golfers have enjoyed some good weather this week and last, as they wrapped up an abbreviated season with regionals and sectionals. Oregon hosted both the boys and girls regionals at Silver Ridge and to my amazement or maybe it was my technological naivety, a person could go to an app and get up-to-date scoring on every golfer on the course. This was on each hole, not after a 9-hole or 18-hole round. The players simply entered scores into their phone and the app would keep a running total on individual and team scores. It wasn’t that long ago that the PGA didn’t even
have this capability. Part of the reason for using the new-fangled app was Covid-related. There was no admittance into the clubhouse or perfunctory awards afterwards. Once your round was done, you either went straight home with mom and dad, or waited in the parking lot for your team bus to leave. In the past, everyone would gather in the clubhouse and scorecards would be tabulated by hand. It was a long, drawn-out affair, one with much more suspense to it. Both methods have their pros and cons. As Bob Dylan once said, “the times, they are a changin”. How about Cassie Nyderek just missing a holein-one on No. 11 by a couple inches at the regional? That hole has always been a fun target to aim at. Here’s a bit of trivia for you old-timers. Remember when pros Calvin Peete and Mick Soli put on an exhibition on what was then a 9-hole Silver (Indian) Ridge back in the 1980s. Lowell Beggs was the mastermind behind that. For area fans looking for other prep sports to watch, Oregon will be hosting a 14-team boys and girls cross country regional on Saturday, Oct. 24. With extra flights needed to separate competitors, there promises to be running from morning until afternoon at Park West.
