05/22/23
Dear Residents,
River Reconnection
This weekend, I had the honor of welcoming guests from around the world to Collinsville for the official opening of the Canton HydroPower Plant.
Originally conceived by Dick Barlow in 2009, the plant generates nearly 1000 kilowatts every hour, driven by the Farmington River. The plant also provides safe passage for fish and eels to the upper part of the river.
More than 200 residents braved a fierce storm to tour the plant and to hear from the many people who brought the plant to life. Among them, our former Poet Laureate, David Leff, who penned the following poem before his untimely death last year:
River Reconnection
Dedication of the Collinsville Hydro Plant
By David Leff
On a chilly, storm-darkened day,
drops pattering my windows, I flip
on a light, simmer a pot of stew
and think of the Farmington
swollen with rain that spins
a turbine. Electrons speed
along wires, stream current
into my kitchen for light and heat,
the river full with showers that grew
my garden’s stewing carrots
and potatoes. The rekindled redbrick
power plant rescued from ruin,
abandoned twice the time it channeled rapids
to hammer, grind, and shape factory
steel, squeezes the distance
between past and present, a fishway
atoning for the stone dam. Flowing water
now glows in street lamps
where I meet friends at dusk, sends
guitar riffs echoing from restaurants
where we gather for a meal and laughs,
runs cash registers and brightens
Main Street shops, drives tools
to cut, drill and fix clapboards
on century-old structures. River power
built this village, and again
muscles water to work minus the wages
of carbon, for a climate right-as-rain.
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