Sinclair, Mary P.

Mary P. Sinclair was born September 23, 1918, in Chisholm, Minnesota. In 1940, she graduated from the College of St. Catherine (St. Paul, MN), majoring in chemistry and English. During the 1950s, she worked at the Library of Congress. There she first became interested in the problems of nuclear energy as a result of her work with classified material from the Atomic Energy Commission.

After moving to her husband's hometown of Midland, Michigan, Sinclair worked as a librarian and technical writer for the Dow Chemical Corporation until retiring to devote her time to raising her children. Her concern about nuclear energy continued, however, and in 1967, when Consumers Power announced plans to construct a nuclear plant in Midland, Sinclair began publicly questioning the move and writing critical letters to the Midland Daily News .

Despite the hostile reactions of other Midland residents, Sinclair escalated her fight against the nuclear plant in 1969, forming the Saginaw Valley Nuclear Study Group, which intervened as a party to the Atomic Energy Commission hearings on the plant. In 1972, she helped to organize National Intervenors, a coalition of anti-nuclear groups designed to intervene in hearings on nuclear safety. Sinclair earned an M.S. in environmental communications from the University of Michigan in 1973. From 1974 to 1978, she held the position of lecturer at the University of Michigan.

Sinclair has participated in numerous conferences on nuclear and environmental issues sponsored by such organizations as the Great Lakes Basin Commission, the Federal Energy Administration, and the United Auto Workers. She has been a member of the National Energy Policy Committee of the Sierra Club, which she represented at the World Energy Conference in Detroit in 1974. In 1978, Sinclair organized the Great Lakes Energy Alliance.

Sinclair's seventeen-year fight against the Consumers Power nuclear plant ended when Consumers Power canceled the plant in 1984. Shortly thereafter, she began working to end Michigan's involvement in the Midwest Compact, the result of the Radioactive Waste Policy Act of 1980 and its 1985 amendment which named Michigan as a dumping ground for low-level radioactive waste. In March 1988, Sinclair helped organize Don't Waste Michigan, a group dedicated to this issue. Michigan eventually withdrew from the Compact.

Sinclair earned her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources in 1991. Since receiving her Ph.D., Sinclair has actively opposed dry cask storage of high-level radioactive waste, especially near the Lake Michigan shore. She was also involved in considering issues relating to the clean-up of nuclear waste following the closing of Big Rock Nuclear Plant in 1997.

From the guide to the Mary P. Sinclair papers, 1967-1999, (Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan)