Holtec Still Pushing For Radioactive Dumping in Cape Cod Bay

Pilgrim Operator Locks Out Workers; NDCAP Votes Against More Meetings; Waterfront Rally Slated for Sat., April 9th

[abstract/short version (folks, this is article is very long, so use this abstract and the headings to guide your reading/skimming if you cannot read the whole thing):

Holtec, owner of Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, wants to dump 1 million gallons of irradiated wastewater in Cape Cod Bay; Holtec has locked out experienced, Plymouth-area workers with Laborers Local 721; NDCAP structural problems and votes; Orwellian language from Holtec; Unprepared, hostile public officials; Public comment, full of outrage and righteous democratic fury; Rally at Wood’s, Sat. 4/9, 12 Noon]

PLYMOUTH –  Holtec International, a New Jersey corporation with a troubling history of public corruption that received the decommissioning contract for Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, intends to press forward with its plans to dump a million gallons of irradiated wastewater into Cape Cod Bay.

At a March 28th meeting of the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel (NDCAP) at Plymouth Town Hall, representatives for Holtec – which has never decommissioned a nuclear plant before – indicated that, despite massive public opposition, it still plans to dump its irradiated wastewater in Cape Cod Bay. In a concession to overwhelming popular outrage, however, Holtec agreed to halt its proposed dumping until 2023.

Nevertheless, Holtec would like to avoid having to pay the expense of trucking the irradiated wastewater elsewhere, as was done at Vermont’s Yankee Nuclear, preferring to dump it in the bay.

Holtec’s Chief Executive Officer, Kris Singh, was almost certainly involved in bribing a Federal official at the Tennessee Valley Authority, according to reporting by ProPublica and WNYC, as well as a report by the Inspector General of a task force appointed by New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy to investigate. The company is also facing a lawsuit from New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas over issues related to nuclear waste.

Lockout and  Safety Allegations

  Holtec, as of March 28th, was engaged in a lockout against the skilled, trained, experienced, local workers from the Laborers Union (Local 721) at Plymouth, according to union members whom I met outside the NDCAP meeting. They said over 60 households in the Plymouth area have had their main breadwinners locked out from their long-time positions at Pilgrim Station, for over a month as of March 28th. 

Holtec International is effectively a large holding company, with a number of smaller subsidiaries. According to Laborers Local 721 Andrew Marshall, of East Bridgewater, Holtec claims that while its company CDI was doing the decommissioning work, it has now been switched to its other subsidiary, HDI, and therefore isn't bound by the contract the Laborers have with CDI (which does not expire until the autumn of 2022). All three companies share the same address on Holtec Drive, in Camden, New Jersey.

Laborers Local 721 Secretary-Treasurer and longtime Pilgrim worker Steve Gustafson, one of the locked out workers, credibly alleged serious safety violations by the inexperienced, untrained – and let’s be frank – scab labor employed by Holtec. The company is only meeting about 50% of its recruitment goals, because so many of what it euphemistically calls “replacement workers” are unable to pass drug and alcohol screening or background checks. It is also recruiting non-local workers, from out of state, some from elsewhere in New England like New Hampshire and Vermont, but others from farther away, including New Jersey, Florida, and Tennessee. One experienced observer privately wondered whether by moving these non-unionized workers around the country, Holtec is better able to expose them to greater amounts of radiation than is medically safe and legally allowed.

Mr. Gustafson’s most disturbing allegations involved serious safety violations at Pilgrim by non-union labor. One security guard was found sleeping on the floor, according to Mr. Gustafson’s contacts that still work inside Pilgrim, while another worker was unaware of basic measures such as how to attach a safety harness before ascending scaffolding. Indeed, one of the replacement workers boldly told the members of Local 721, who were picketing at Pilgrim’s gate, that this was their first time setting foot in a power plant. Taken together, Mr. Gustafson and Mr. Marshall painted a disturbing picture of a duplicitous and reckless corporation in their statements about Holtec International.

Structural problems with the NDCAP (Plus French Revolution Footnote)

The structure of the NDCAP – a body created by Massachusetts statute to advise the Governor and educate the general public on the decommissioning of Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station – is deeply problematic. My understanding is that then State Senator Dan Wolf (D-The and The Islands), who played a the legislation establishing NDCAP, always intended that the body would exclude representatives from Holtec, concerned that putting Holtec on the panel regulating – wait for it! – Holtec would be an obvious conflict of interest.

According to someone familiar with the process, however, the legislation was stripped of this measure by forces in the office of then-House Speaker Robert DeLeo (D-Winthrop). DeLeo, this source continued, was always “well taken care of” by former Pilgrim owner Entergy’s lobbyists and contributions, and now this same cozy – some might say corrupt – relationship had been inherited by Pilgrim’s new owners, Holtec.

The current structure of the panel includes members for Holtec, directly employed by Holtec, who always vote in Holtec’s favor; thus, a bloc is formed, and the members for the public, who typically vote for greater scrutiny and restriction on Holtec; and a number of state officials who are ex officio members and simply abstain. Some members, including a Plymouth Select Board member, simply do not typically show up to the NDCAP meetings, according to one knowledgeable source. To this historian’s eye, the NDCAP’s structure resembles nothing so much as the Estates General of pre-revolutionary France; Holtec is typically able to vote in a block to quash opposition.¹

Lampert’s Three Motions

Longtime Pilgrim safety activist and NDCAP Member Mary Lampert, of Duxbury (an appointee of the President of the Massachusetts Senate), made three motions, all of which failed; the way in which they failed is precisely the kind of voting en bloc described above.

Mrs. Lampert noted, as she introduced her first motion – seconded by Henrietta Cosentino, of Plymouth (appointed by the Plymouth Select Board) –  to increase the frequency of NDCAP meetings to once a month, that since Holtec’s announcement on Dec. 1st, 2021, there has only been one meeting of the Panel, on what is very clearly an emergency issue, i.eHoltec's dumping plan. That meeting, on Jan. 31st, was exclusively virtual, and, as Mrs. Cosentino informed the panel, her attempts to remotely second Mrs. Lampert’s motion were never recognized (which, to my mind, raises very serious questions about the meetings, if members of the Panel themselves cannot participate in it for technical reasons). She further stated that her numerous email queries to the Panel were never responded to, over the course of several weeks and multiple emails. 
Vice Chair Pine duBois, of Kingston, a longtime environmentalist and President of the Jones River Landing (appointed by the Speaker of the House of Representatives), disagreed with the necessity of meeting every month, saying that “as chief cook and bottle washer,” meeting every two months was easier for her, given the leg work she has to do in organizing the NDCAP meetings, and having a full time job, as well. She emphasized her shared concern, however, wondering about the effect of radionuclides on the microorganisms, flora, and fauna of the bays.

After several more exchanges, the vote was called on Mrs. Lampert’s motion to meet every month. The motion failed, with 2 votes in favor (Lampert and Cosentino), 7 votes opposed, and 6 abstaining (the ex officio members from the State agencies). The ‘no’ votes included not only those members of the Panel, such as David Noyes, John Moylan, Pat O’Brien, and Mary Jo Gastlick,² who are currently or were formerly employed by Holtec, but also the Chair, former Plymouth Selectman and 2022 Select Board candidate John Mahoney, and the Vice Chair, Ms. duBois.

Mrs. Lampert made another motion, again seconded by Mrs. Cosentino, to extend the meeting duration from two to three hours, to better accommodate questions from both Panel members and the general public. This motion likewise failed to carry, by the same 2-7-6 margin as the previous vote.

Finally, Mrs. Lampert brought a third motion, once more seconded by Mrs. Cosentino, to add a second period of public comment. This motion likewise failed to carry, by the by-now-familiar margin of 2 for, 7 against, and 6 abstaining.

Thus, in a development that was no doubt welcomed in Holtec’s corporate offices in Camden, New Jersey, the Panel overseeing the decommissioning of Pilgrim voted not to allow greater public input and more extensive questioning of Holtec. Cries of “shameful!” echoed through the hall, reflecting the broad mood of the public.

Holtec and the Continuing Relevance of George Orwell; Unprepared or Unresponsive Public Officials

Holtec employee and Panel member David Noyes, as part of his presentation to justify Holtec’s intended dumping,, took issue with Mary Lampert’s description of the engrossment upon our commons, in the form of a million gallons of irradiated wastewater in our bays, as “dumping.”

It was not dumping, Mr. Noyes insisted, but rather a “targeted release” of the irradiated wastewater.

This attempted distinction drew guffaws and derision from the members of the public present. It also reminded me of something George Orwell said, in his famous 1946 essay Politics and the English Language. “In our time,” Orwell wrote, “political speech” – and let us not operate under the illusion that Mr. Noyes’ speech is anything but political – “and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.”
Despite Mr. Noyes’ attempt precisely to defend the indefensible, the assembled crowd – fishermen, environmentalists, laborers, members of the Wampanoag nation, attorneys, scholars, common citizens – were having none of it. 

Holtec was aided in its attempt to sell its radioactive dumping by that most-bought of Federal regulatory agencies (which is saying something!), the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The official from the NRC, Anthony Dimitriadis, gave a presentation, that as Attorney James Lampert of Duxbury (Mr. Lampert is married to Mrs. Lampert, and practiced for decades as one of Boston’s leading intellectual property lawyers) demonstrated in a document shared with the Panel, was unsound from a scientific and regulatory perspective, and consisted largely of a series of non sequiturs and obfuscations.

Indeed, the presentation was frankly so bad that when longtime activist Diane Turco, of Harwich, Director of Cape Downwinders questioned one of the references included in Mr. Dimitriadis’ own slideshow, he was unable to answer or explain the reference at all.. This does not inspire confidence.

Nor was he the only unprepared or unresponsive public official. Seth Pickering, of the Mass. Department of Environmental Protection, was not only unable to answer Ms. Turco’s well-researched questions, he was consistently hostile and condescending in his inability to do so. To say he was hardly a model of public responsiveness would be charitable.

Public Comment, Widespread Outrage; Wampanoag Do Not Get Chance to Speak

Public comment was harsh and unsparing.

In addition to hearing again from Mr. Marshall and Mr. Gustafson of Laborers Local 721, the Panel heard testimony from Olivia Michaud, 20, a woman who fishes and lobsters with her Father and Uncle out of both Sandwich and Plymouth.

Ms. Michaud, who remarked on her discomfort with public speaking, gave an excellent and informative address, explaining that by late summer or early autumn, an anoxic (oxygen-free) dead zone already forms in Cape Cod Bay, typically off Barnstable, the result of algal blooms feeding off of too much runoff. How much worse, she wondered, would this be for the fishing community with radionuclides released into the Bay? Would people buy their catch, when they had fears of radiation in the bay? Even the perception of this threat was potentially lethal for the fishing industry, according to my friend Mark E. DeCristoforo, of the Massachusetts Seafood Collaborative, a commercial fisheries trade group, who gave a wonderful, small ‘d’ democratic address prior to the Jan. 31st NDCAP meeting.

Paul Francis, whom I remember fondly as a Chemistry teacher at Duxbury High School in my youth, informed the Panel exactly – and I mean exactly – how many particles of the radionuclides in question would be present in a gallon of seawater. Indeed, Mr. Francis had a far better command of the scientific essentials, it seemed, than the State and Federal appointees whose job it is to monitor these issues for the public.

Attorney Lampert, of Duxbury, laid out both practical and legal aspects of the situation. Holtec “doesn’t have to do this;” he emphasized, noting the option to simply ship the wastewater away.

Moreover, Lampert convincingly argued that precedent and case law would appear to be on the side of those opposed to dumping, stating that in four recent Supreme Court cases in which the Court considered whether or not states had regulatory authority over nuclear plants, the Court sided with the States every time.

I made a few points of my own (will post my speech later), in defense of our commons, and noting that Upton Sinclair said it well: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

Plymouth realtor Candis Parry spoke movingly about the impact on the waters where her grandchildren play, and described the economic harm this dumping would produce for local realtors.

Paul Quintal, who runs a charter fishing boat out of Plymouth Harbor, detailed the economic damage the dumping would cause to his and similar businesses.

The Medicine Man of the Herring Pond Wampanoag, Troy Currence, was also there, alongside his daughter and their friends. Despite having arguably the best claim of anyone in the room to speak on this matter – if ten thousand years of human history are to have any meaning – Mr. Currence was not allowed to speak, as the Chair, Mr. Mahoney, had another appointment and ruled that I would be the last speaker.

After I spoke, the meeting broke up. The feeling in the room was such that the Chair, Mr. Mahoney, offered to escort Holtec’s chief spokesman, Mr. Noyes, to his car. Whether it was the enraged workers Holtec had locked out, or the outraged fisherwomen and environmentalists, or just incredulous everyday citizens, there were many people, from many walks of life, angry at the Holtec Corporation and its agents that night.

A rally against Holtec’s proposed dumping, organized by Paul Quintal and others, will be held on Saturday, April 9th, on the pier next to Wood’s Seafood, at noon on the Plymouth Waterfront (full disclosure: I will in all likelihood be a speaker).
           

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will be in Plymouth on April 21st.

Despite all this, I’m cautiously optimistic. As the great Woody Guthrie put it, eight decades ago, “people in this world are getting organized,” and we will not roll over in the face of this corporate aggression.

And that’s the news from the Old Colony tonight.

1.  In the Estates General, called in 1789 during the last days of the French monarchy as a kind of emergency national assembly, votes were parceled out not based on democratic or egalitarian, but on feudal, principles. All French society was divided into three “Estates” – the First Estate was the Catholic clergy, the Second Estate, the nobility; the Third Estate was everyone else. Each Estate was given one vote. Therefore, the clergy and the nobility, despite representing a tiny proportion of the People of France, could always outvote the Third Estate (i.e., almost the entire population).

2.  Indeed, Ms. Gastlick accused this reporter of “creeping” on social media, after I responded to a public comment of hers by asking her to confirm that, as her public LinkedIn profile indicates – found immediately via a simple Google search – she had an employment background with Holtec and the nuclear industry.

Ms. Gastlick may not be aware of it, but she sits on a statutorily-established advisory body that answers to the People of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The fact that she votes in favor of her former employer –  that she is one of the foxes helping guard the henhouse – strikes me as directly relevant to this discussion.