Maxwell's Silver Hammer 283
report was issued it was too late for the Navy people to use it, and they
considered it too biased to have any value anyway. However, I don't put
much faith in this bit of blame shifting.
The PSC's panel of judges spent nearly a third of their advisory opin-
ion attacking Marino's work and his "argumentative" demeanor at the
witness table. Via a Freedom of Information Act request, Andy later
found that the technical parts of this opinion had been written by one of
the judges' paid consultants, Asher Sheppard, then a researcher at
UCLA. Sheppard was at that time preparing a monograph, The Biological
Effects of Electric and Magnetic Fields of Extremely Low Frequency, under
contract to the American Electric Power Company. He concluded that
there were no significant biological effects from low to moderate-inten-
sity ELF fields such as occurred around power lines and appliances, de-
spite the fact that he'd been working under W. Ross Adey, whose career
has been devoted to studying just such effects.
Nevertheless, we won. The Public Service Commission specifically
contradicted its judicial advisers, commending Marino as a valuable wit-
ness, and adopted most of our recommendations. One line already under
construction was built, largely because New York Governor Hugh Carey
threatened to dissolve the PSC if the commission stopped it, but the
utilities were ordered to buy additional land for a wider safety zone
along the right of way. They were also forced to invest $5 million in a
five-year research program administered by the New York State Depart-
ment of Health, and to stop encouraging multiple use of the land under
power lines, such as leasing it for playgrounds. An additional six or
seven proposed lines have been postponed indefinitely. Most important
was the plain fact that we raised the issue successfully against great odds
and secured a health-conscious verdict from the PSC, gaining time to
gather more facts about the dangers.
The Navy's ELF antenna has also been on hold for many years. Sea-
farer lost momentum when 80-percent opposition in two 1976 referenda
in Michigan's Upper Peninsula forced then candidate Jimmy Carter to
oppose it publicly for a while. Once more renamed and redesigned, Pro-
ject ELF has been heavily funded by the Reagan regime with an eye
toward expansion. The first step now would consist of a 56-mile
aboveground antenna carried on intersecting rows of utility poles in two
corridors cut out of the Escanaba River State Forest. In July 1983, the
Michigan
Natural
Resources Commission voted to allow construction.
However,
six
months later a federal district
judge
upheld
the
suit
of
several local groups, on whose behalf I testified, ruling that the Navy
must prepare a new environmental impact statement. The Navy lost two