The zoning appeal was denied. What had changed was the demographics of the town. Many former residents of New York City and its suburbs, and other areas outside the state, had migrated into the town. They did not like the "look" of the proposed plant and what it would do to the aesthetics of the area. (It was not really an environmental issue, as the company had met the regulatory requirements.) A lesbian activist, originally from Nebraska, who opposed to the plant defeated a long time local politician whose family had lived in the area for several generations for the office of mayor. Her allies took over the town council, and the zoning approval was never granted.
The tragedy in this case is that the mostly working class oldtimers lost control of their community to a bunch of outsiders. Eventually they will die off or move and not leave any legacy, as so many of them are childless for one of several reasons. Their boutiques will be long shut, their policies will have chased away industry and commerce, and this area will become more immersed in poverty, a Yankee Appalachia if you will. Unfortunately, this may be the fate of the "Our Towns" and "Bedford Falls" of the small town Northeast for the foreseeable future.
yeah- it's a shame that all the old timers who made these towns/states so attractive in the first place are then run out of town by those hwo eartned their money the easy way and want to profit off what the real hard workers accomplished- a true shame- there are parts of Maine that used to have an excellent hometown quality to them but are now nothing more than cheesey tourist traps and full of activists and mother earth lovers/worshippers. We've long since left, and found a great little town in another state, but the pressure is on to change- Crimes is slowly creeping toward us, city folk are snapping up second and third homes here, and the whole atmosphere is slowly changing- and not for the better either.