Here’s another story like the one below on mountaintop removal mining in which a key environmental regulatory agency steps up to the plate and hits one out of the park. It’s not a walk off, but we’re coming to the bottom of the ninth now and Indian Point is down one run with, I daresay, some strong closing pitching in the form of the Clean Water Act and environmental lawyers and activists en masse to see that it remains properly enforced.
Indian Point, if you don’t know, is one of the oldest nuclear power facilities in the US. Unit 1 opened in 1962 and ran until 1974, but Units 2 and 3, opened in the mid-1970s and are still running. Indian Point, by the way, is just downriver from Storm King Mountain over which one of the first big victories of the environmental movement was won.
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, my former employer, sent a letter on Friday to Entergy, the facility’s owner, that the two units “…do not and will not comply with existing New York State water quality standards.” This article from the “Wall St. Journal” tells the story. Entergy is, not incidentally, the same company that operates Vermont Yankee which the state legislature is going to shut down over tritium leaks and lies about the leaks from company officials. Grist reports here on Vermont Yankee and also on Entergy having trouble in Mississippi with some highly questionable accounting.
More from the Journal article: “‘That power is replaceable,’ said Alex Matthiessen, president of environmental group Riverkeeper. ‘The evidence for why the plant doesn’t meet state water-quality standards is overwhelming,’ he said, adding Indian Point accounts for the deaths of about a billion fish a year and that the group estimates cooling towers could be constructed for $200 million to $300 million.”
Beyond Indian Point, Matthiessen’s assertion about nuclear power being replaceable is completely correct. We really ought not to be going further down this dead end road when there is already so much proven potential in renewables, energy efficiency, and all the other clean tech approaches that are coming so rapidly into play.
In any event, good for my old colleagues at NYSDEC (finally) doing the right thing.
