Vermont Yankee: a day of lobbying in Montpelier
By Todd Martin.
I awoke at 6:30 a.m. on a couch I had never slept on. I showered in an unfamiliar bathroom and ate breakfast in a strange kitchen. Ripping the tags off of my new pinstripe suit and pulling the pins out of my bleach white dress shirt, I put the finishing touches on my half-windsor knot. At 7:00am, John and I were out the door, without coffee mind you, to drive to Montpelier to speak with Vermont State Senators. The topic of the day, the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power plant, a radioactive chemical-leaking, collapsing plant in Vernon, Vermont that could be shut down in 2012.
In mid February, Vermont Senators will vote on whether or not to re-license the power plant for another 20 years.
A GreenPeace Organizer explains the basics of lobbying to a group of Vermont citizens..
Speeding along the curves and hills of VT Route 100, a sullen grey sky sweeping across a mountainous land out my passenger side window. With the drone of talk radio in the background, I read through notes and documents about Vermont Yankee, its history of bad management, its current leaking of radioactive tritium, and the role of the plant in Vermont’s energy future.
John and I arrived at the Vermont Natural Resource Council at 9:30am.
After receiving instructions, we were off to the state house, where sharks in suits patrolled the hallways, their fat thumbs pounding away at blackberries and palm pilots, their silk suits swishing between their thighs. Past a massive bust of President Lincoln we found room ten, where we were greeted with several paintings of Vermont governors past, their wrinkled white faces pasty and posed. After coffee and handshakes, we got down to business.
The day’s events were organized by a number of environmental justice groups including GreenPeace, Vermont Natural Resource Council, Vermont Public Interest Research Group, and the League of Conservation Voters, just to name a few. The day focused around lobbying; how to talk to your Senators and ask them for a particular action on a particular issue.
My assignment, engage Senators Bill Carris and Kevin Mullin of Rutland county on the Vermont Yankee issue and determining if they would vote against relicensing the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power plant.
At 10:00 a.m., myself and five other residents of Rutland County sat down with Senator Mullin in the glass-encased State House cafeteria, or as I like to call it, “the shark tank”. Senator Mullin, to our surprise, said that he would vote no to relicensing the plant if he had to vote today. This was thrilling news since we thought that he was against us on this issue, but apparently, the old shark is sick of radioactive chemicals leaking into his tank. After the meeting, proceeding past a procession of pimple-faced pupils clutching brown bag lunches, we returned to room ten and reconvened with our fellow lobbyers.
At 12:00pm, myself and the lobbying team form Rutland Country prepared to sit down with Senator Bill Carris in “the shark tank” in order to engage him on the Vermont Yankee Issue. When the senator ran late, the reality of the situation struck me.
There I was, sitting at a round table of like-minded individuals who all want to see this beast shut down. Vermont Yankee has a long history of accidents and failures. In 2007, one of the cooling towers at the plant collapsed, a transformer caught fire within the plant, the alcohol enforcement office at the plant was found drunk on the job, and most recently the plant has been leaking radioactive tritium into the surrounding area at a level 40 times the legal limit. Entergy, the company that owns and operates Vermont Yankee, is a Louisiana based corporation that has only offered to provide 11% of Vermont’s energy supply at twice the current rate if relicensed. Built in 1972 in Vernon, Vermont on the banks of the Connecticut River, the plant was built to operate for forty years. It is currently thirty-eight and is seeking a twenty year extension from the Vermont legislature.
When Senator Carris arrived at “the shark tank” at 12:15, my head was swimming with the facts about the plant. When he sat down at our table, I was the first to bite. I asked him if he would vote no to relicensing Vermont Yankee, to which he responded yes, if he had to vote today he would vote against relicensing the decrepit plant. Looking around the table, I saw my constituent’s eyes light up. When asked why, Carris cited Entergy’s failure to maintain the states trust over the years, especially since Entergy corporate officials lied under oath to the state of Vermont in December 2009 about the existence of underground pipes containing radioactive tritium.
When a tritium leak was identified on January 7th, 2010, it became quite clear that Entergy had lied. He cited Entergy’s decommissioning fund as well, a fund that Entergy is supposed to put money into every year to pay for the eventual decommissioning and clean up of the plant. It is estimated that it will cost 987 million to decommission the plant. Entergy is currently 600 million dollars short. In hopes of avoiding these costs, Entergy hopes to get the plant relicensed for twenty years and then sell it to Enexus, a company that is already in serious debt. This could leave Vermont taxpayers with the bill of decommissioning the plant.
Relicensing Vermont Yankee for another twenty years is a bad plan for Vermont that could result in further environmental damage and further stress on Vermont taxpayers who pay the eighth highest tax rate in the country.
At 1:30pm, Peter Shumlin, the Senate President, called a press conference where he announced that the Vermont Senate would vote on the Vermont Yankee relicensing issue some time in the week of February 22, 2010.
Sitting in the balcony of the Senate chamber, I watched Mr. Shumlin deliver his speech as he pointed out why it is a bad deal for Vermont to relicense the plant. I thank Senator Carris and Mullin for their support on this issue and I implore the other senators to vote no on the relicensing bill for the sake of Vermont’s environment, businesses and taxpayers.
Short URL: http://www.themountaineer.org/?p=1352
Posted by editor_green
on Feb 23, 2010 Filed under Green @ Green.
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