ABSTRACT

After locals had endured more than a year of feeling intimidated by announcements, meetings, trespasses, rumors and other uncertainties, vulnerability and powerlessness, future shock, and disenchantment with big industry, followed by three years of various kinds and levels of construction chaos which kept locals in a highly reactive state, Bighole's project finally became operational. School records provided the most reliable measure of short-term population changes. Having peaked at 983 during the last year of construction, enrollment gradually dropped until, on opening day of the first school year after the project became operational, 692 students were registered. Although newcomers did not "take over" as had been feared, positions of leadership in the community were no longer a litany of old family names. Social circles, which had become more exclusive in reaction to the flood of construction workers, generally remained tight but were beginning to loosen up in response to explorations in fraternization now going on between old and new residents.