The Paris Township Preservation Committee was formed at a meeting
on January 14, 1973, called in response to announcements by the Wisconsin Electric Power Company that Paris Township, a small agricultural community in Kenosha County, was one of four sites in Wisconsin under consideration for the location of a nuclear power plant. The committee, initially a group of thirteen Paris Township residents, had as its stated purpose the preservation of Paris Township “in its present agricultural state.” Its self-appointed task was to focus and lead community opposition to the displacement of families and homes and other transformations necessarily consequent to the location in Paris of a nuclear power facility.
Under the leadership of Robert M. Kueny, a local architect, committee members embarked upon a wide range of activities--petitioning, lobbying, letter writing, public speaking, and more--designed to demonstrate and articulate the opposition of Paris Township residents to the location of a plant in their community. They affiliated with a regional group with environmental/anti-nuclear concerns, the Lake Michigan Federation, made contacts with other anti-nuclear groups in Wisconsin and elsewhere, and began to accumulate information about the safety risks of nuclear power in general. While their primary concern was always to keep a nuclear plant out of Paris, the group also engaged in related activities of broader scope such as actively lobbying for passage of 1973 Assembly Bill 814 pertaining to selection of power plant sites.
On June 19, 1974 the Wisconsin Electric Power Company announced that it was dropping consideration of a nuclear power facility in Paris at least “for the balance of the 1980's” in favor of a coal-fired electric generating plant to be built in Pleasant Prairie, Kenosha County. As this decision removed the immediate need for the committee, it ceased its active functions.
