They came to stop it Wednesday night � at least 500 people filling the Sangre de Cristo Arts and Conference Center ballroom to protest local attorney Don Banner's plan to zone 24,000 acres in Pueblo County for a nuclear power plant.

� So many came, in fact, that the Pueblo County commissioners listened to more than four hours of testimony before recessing the public hearing until tonight, when the final speakers will get their turn. Banner will also be given time to offer rebuttal of the criticism. The meeting is scheduled to begin at 5 p.m.

�� Wednesday's hearing was the second night of the public hearing on Banner's proposal and it was the opponents' turn. Speaker after speaker gave the commissioners sharp-edged testimony on why the county should reject the plan, claiming nuclear power plants are unsafe and expensive and would brand the county as a "utility closet." They pointed to the continuing news story in Japan where several reactors are failing.

�� And they focused hard on why the county was allowing Banner to try to rezone land through a planned-unit development process to give it faster consideration. Several speakers quoted a letter from Banner to county officials urging the county to "bend the rules" if necessary to give the zoning request fast consideration.

� "When you bend the rules, somebody gets rich and they leave the waste behind," charged Suzanne Morgan, one of the speakers who argued that taxpayers end up paying to decommission nuclear power plants.

�� During a break, Banner said he used the phrase "bend the rules" in his letter that asked the county not to add more conditions to his rezoning request.

�� The commissioners have indicated they will not make an immediate decision, but will take time to consider all the information provided by both supporters and critics.

�� Joseph Leniham, a local attorney, offered them one easy out, saying Congress is considering hearings and a possible two-year moratorium on nuclear plants pending an investigation of the failure at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant in Japan.

�� "I suggest you punt for two years," he advised the commissioners.

� Banner gave an 80-minute presentation Tuesday night insisting that nuclear power was safe and would be an economic boon to the county. His supporters endorsed that during the four-hour public hearing.

�� Wednesday brought the backlash with opponents filling the large ballroom and several dozen speaking.

�� Ross Vincent, of the Sangre de Cristo Chapter of the Sierra Club, said Banner's application � to rezone land in hopes of attracting a future nuclear power developer � was too empty to justify the serious decision the commissioners were facing.

� "The concerns about the health and environmental impacts of this project are real," Vincent said. "This is just an application, not a plan, being backed by a dubious sales pitch."

� Larry Howe-Kerr, former Pueblo West Metropolitan District manager, spoke for the Better Pueblo group. He said the unanswered questions in Banner's request made it a "blank check" for an unknown future utility if the commissioners approve it.

�"These vested rights (you're granting) will dog us for years," he said.

� Water for the proposed nuclear plant also came under scrutiny. Banner had said in earlier presentations that one source of water would be the Welton Ditch, but Larry Trujillo, former state lawmaker, told the commissioners that Banner's project has no claim on the Welton Ditch.

�� Banner's plan has attracted the interest of environmental groups along the Front Range and they came armed with literature about the dangers of nuclear waste, the high cost of taxpayer subsidies to the nuclear industry and inadequate federal oversight and insurance.

�� Joann Seeman, of the Rocky Mountain Sierra Club, dismissed� Banner's argument Tuesday night that all power sources have "risk" � which was his acknowledgement of� the Japanese crisis. Banner also discussed the two most famous nuclear accidents prior to Japan � the Chernobyl, Ukraine, explosion in 1986, and Three Mile Island, Pa., in 1979. He attributed the Chernobyl explosion � which killed 50 people at the plant � on shoddy design and construction and the Three Mile Island reactor meltdown as proof safety controls worked. No one died at that reactor shut-down.

�� "I thought he was saying last night, �Don't worry about Chernobyl,� and �Don't worry about Three Mile Island,� and I thought he was saying you can ignore Japan, too," Seeman told the commissioners.

� She said Banner glossed over the dangers of spent radioactive fuel rods at nuclear plants. Recycling spent fuel is not legal in the U.S., she argued.

� Jack Stucki, a retired health care provider, went to Chernobyl in 1991 as part of a delegation and said the plant explosion wreaked more havoc than the 50 deaths at the plant that Banner mentioned. He said the U.N. report on the accident said that 4,000 other people "will die" from cancers caused by radioactive exposure. Banner mentions that number as possible cancer cases.

� "Don't degrade what happened to my friends at Chernobyl any further," Stucki said with emotion.

� Dave Barber, a retired teacher in Rye, recounted the radioactivity of the fuels used in nuclear plants and argued they are leaked into the environment.

� "The waste is not clean and it's not green," Barber said. "The three of you (commissioners) have been elected to represent the people and interests of Pueblo County. Bury this thing as deep as you can."

� Michele Bobyn, a forensic biologist, said some of the testimony Tuesday was inaccurate about radioactive leakage from power plants. She said biologists have done long-term studies of the animals around the Savannah River plant in Georgia and those animals have radioactive elements in them from the power plant.

� "There will be leakage," she advised the commissioners. "Maybe we should be doing baseline studies now on our exposure if we are going to be exposed to this for the long-term."

�� Rachelle Werme, a Pueblo native, said she worked in Stuttgart, Germany, during the Chernobyl accident and walked every day through the radioactive fallout.

� "Mr. Banner, I hope your children and grandchildren never have to walk through fallout in the future," she said.

�� Donna Murphy, of Canon City, warned the commissioners they were making a decision that could affect Fremont County, too.

� "You're making this decision for communities along the river, too," she said.

� Doug Wylie, a Boone dairy farmer, said the nuclear plant would be a direct threat to his livelihood.

� "Our produce would be branded. Pueblo chile would have a new kind of heat added to it," he said, getting a laugh from the audience. "To build water-intensive industries in a desert is beyond foolish."