Joseph Eugene Boivin (1939-2010) was a native of Rumford, Maine and served as its Fire Chief until 1989. In late 1990, he performed this Epic Rant to John Williams and Matthew Scott of the nascent Maine Low-Level Radioactive Waste agency, which was charged by the Maine Legislature with finding some unlucky Maine town whose people were so stupid that they would accept a giant radioactive waste dump in their town, the waste being from the Maine Yankee nuclear reactor in Wiscasset, Maine.
You can hear Eugene's rant here.
At the time, I was a free-lance news reporter for the Lewiston Maine Sun-Journal newspaper and lived on Waldo Street in Rumford. Eugene Boivin showed up at the official 'getting to know you' meeting held by the state agency and gave Messrs. Williams and Scott a piece of his mind. His rant is very trenchant and was so forceful that I think it made the State of Maine give up trying to push this radioactive crap onto the present and future citizens of Rumford. The other place they were seriously looking at was land in the Bottle Lake Pluton near Lincoln, Maine claimed under treaty by the Penobscot Indian Nation. They were trying to push this garbage onto the people of Rumford or onto Native Americans on the Penobscot. They weren't holding meetings in Cape Elizabeth or Cumberland Foreside, as I recall. Kinda funny how that happens. Eventually, the State of Maine sent all of it to Barnwell, South Carolina where it is now entombed.
Eugene Boivin's Rant was very inspiring to me as a young (27 y.o.) reporter and citizen in 1990. It is important that people continue to exist who are not afraid to speak up for the common good in such a forceful manner, if only to serve as examples for the rest of us.
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