NDCAP Discusses Pilgrim Evaporation; Plymouth Nip Ban Referendum; Plymouth Independent Starts Publishing; Plus: An Essay On Voter Turnout
The Plymouth County Observer, No. 124
[Readers, first of all let me apologize for the delay in publishing this edition I started a new job last month, and have been behind in other areas of my life. Moreover, the essay below on voter turnout just got further and further away from completion the more I looked into the issue. However, I’ll be out of town starting on Sunday, Dec. 10th, for about two weeks, so I wanted to publish something for you, my very patient readers and subscribers.
Below are three quick updates that are free to everyone, followed by a lengthy essay on voter turnout for paid subscribers.
Thank you again, and best wishes to all for a safe, happy, and healthy Holiday season. — Ben Cronin.]
NDCAP Discusses Evaporation at Pilgrim
(PLYMOUTH) — The Massachusetts Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel (NDCAP) met on November 27th, 2023, at Plymouth Town Hall, where it elected a new Chair and Vice Chair, and learned that Holtec has further extended its timeline for decommissioning to 2035, with evaporation of the 900,000 (formerly 1.1 million; Holtec says the difference is due to evaporation) gallons of radioactively- and chemically-contaminated wastewater emerging as Holtec’s de facto chosen method of disposition of the wastewater.
There was no news from MassDEP regarding when their Final Determination on Holtec’s application to modify its permit to allow discharge of the wastewater in question into Cape Cod Bay; in July, the Department issued a tentative determination denying Holtec’s application on the grounds that it would violate the Massachusetts Ocean Sanctuaries Act (M.G.L. c. 132A Secs. 12A-Sec. 16J).
(Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth, at left, and Manomet Hill, at right, taken from Saquish Beach; credit — J. Benjamin Cronin.)
On November 27th, the Panel began by reorganizing. James Lampert, of Duxbury, was elected as the Chair of the Panel, while Mary Gatslick, of Plymouth, was elected as Vice Chair.
Mr. Lampert expressed his intention to run fair and impartial meetings, and to let all sides of a question be heard. Mr. Lampert, who worked for decades as Partner at the law firm of WilmerHale (formerly Hale and Dorr), as well as his wife and fellow NDCAP Member Mary Lampert, have been longtime Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station watchdogs. As Mrs. Lampert noted in her nominating speech, Mr. Lampert served as the Chair of the Duxbury Zoning Board of Appeals for fifteen years, and has long experience with chairing a fair meeting (I should note that Mr. and Mrs. Lampert serve on the Duxbury Nuclear Advisory Committee, of which I am also a member).
Mrs. Gatslick, the new Vice Chair, worked for three decades in the nuclear industry, including at Holtec, the present owner of the plant.
Holtec has extended its decommissioning timeline, the Panel was told, from 2031 — itself an extension from the prior end-date of 2027 — to 2035.
Given that ten years is the estimated amount of time it would take for the water to naturally evaporate entirely (as stated at the September NDCAP meeting), and that 200,000 gallons have already evaporated, according to Holtec, some observers concluded that Holtec, faced with a likely ruling by MassDEP against its preferred method of disposal of the water — discharge into Cape Cod Bay, which is illegal — is now relying on evaporation (both naturally and through the use of submerged heaters that Holtec says are for heating purposes for the comfort of its workers) to dispose of the wastewater.
Financial considerations likely play a role, as well, since the Decommissioning Trust Fund – paid into by ratepayers, and on which Holtec will rely for its profits – has incurred losses with recent market downturns, and the more water is evaporated, the less there is to ship — which costs Holtec money. This led to concerns from some observers that there may not be enough money in the Decommissioning Trust Fund to pay for decommissioning at the longer, eight-year timescale.
At the meeting, NDCAP Member Andrew Gottlieb, of Mashpee, who serves as Executive of the Association to Preserve Cape Cod, in an exchange with David Noyes, Senior Compliance Manager for Holtec-owned Comprehensive Decommissioning International (CDI), wondered whether Holtec, in the wake of the July tentative determination by MassDEP to deny Holtec’s application to modify its permit to allow dumping of radioactively- and chemically-contaminated wastewater into Cape Cod Bay, was essentially choosing a different method of disposition of the water — evaporation — now that it appeared that dumping into the bay was likely foreclosed to them. In effect, the people of Plymouth and the region were being punished — via the longer decommissioning time and the evaporation of wastewater into the air — because Holtec did not like the regulatory environment in which it found itself operating, suggested Mr. Gottlieb.
Plymouth Select Board Vice Chair and NDCAP Member Kevin Canty expressed concern to MassDEP representative and NDCAP Member Seth Pickering regarding when and under what conditions the Commonwealth’s regulatory apparatus would be activated with respect to evaporation.
On the whole, the meeting made clear that, without ever saying it outright, Holtec has chosen evaporation de facto as its preferred option for disposing of the wastewater it purchased in 2019.
Relevant here is correspondence from earlier in the Fall between MassDEP and Holtec. On September 25th, MassDEP’s Seth Pickering, a member of NDCAP, wrote to Holtec’s Site Vice President for Pilgrim, John Moylan, on behalf of the Department.
“MassDEP writes to confirm that, if new equipment or if a change in a method of operation is proposed to facilitate evaporation of the reactor system process water at the facility that could emit regulated air pollutants, that equipment, or that change in a method of operation, may be subject to MassDEP Air Quality Permitting pursuant to 310 CMR 7.02,” wrote Mr. Pickering, MassDEP’s Southeast Region Deputy Regional Director of the Bureau of Air and Waste.
In addition, Mr. Pickering wrote, “the Department recommends that Holtec contact the MassDEP Southeast Regional Office well in advance of making any physical or operational changes, if it chooses evaporation to dispose of the Pilgrim Station reactor system process water, for the purpose of discussing Air Quality Permitting applicability and requirements pursuant to 310 CMR 7.02.”1
Despite the September letter from MassDEP, and despite earlier commitments “to an open and transparent decommissioning,”2 Holtec has repeated the same pattern it evinced with the proposal to discharge the wastewater into our bays: of making, or attempting to make, significant decisions affecting the Towns and region surrounding Pilgrim without consulting, or even giving substantive notice to, the communities affected by the company’s proposed course of action.
The next NDCAP meeting will take place on Monday evening, January 29th, 2024, at 6:30 p.m.
Plymouth Nip Ban Referendum Election To Be Held On Jan. 13th, 2024
(PLYMOUTH) — The Town of Plymouth will hold a special referendum election on the recent nip ban passed by Town Meeting on January 13th, 2024.
The nip ban, which passed by just five votes at the October 21st Fall Town Meeting, was quickly challenged by a petition campaign that found significant support from sixteen liquor stores across the town. The petitioners received the requisite number of signatures, and the election — estimated to cost approximately $57,000 — will duly take place.
The nip ban will not take effect until July 1st, 2024. In addition, a repeal article could be placed on Plymouth’s Annual Town Meeting warrant in the spring via the signature of any ten voters per Massachusetts statute.
The Plymouth Independent Begins Publication
(PLYMOUTH) — The Plymouth Independent has started publishing. The online, community-based newspaper is off to an extremely welcome start, with wide-ranging coverage and incisive journalism.
Editor Mark Pothier, reporters Andrea Estes and Fred Thys, its several correspondents, the publication’s board of directors, and all of its supporters, deserve the thanks and commendation of the entire region for providing this necessary public service.
I started this publication in April of 2022 to deal in part with this same issue which the Plymouth Independent aims to combat — the growth of what are rightly called news deserts across the entire country in the wake of the decline of local and regional newspapers and journals. But whereas I am by training an academic historian, with a head halfway in the 18th century and an interest in the pamphlets of the Revolutionary 18th century Atlantic world, the editors and reporters of The Plymouth Independent are by training and extensive experience journalists, and very fine ones, and I think that becomes evident when one encounters their work.
Moreover, whereas this newsletter is a one-man operation, The Plymouth Independent has a level of financial resources and stability that are the sine qua non (“without which nothing”) of a vigorous community newspaper.3
The establishment of a new community newspaper in Plymouth is good news not just for that town, but for the entire region, for Plymouth is, as previous centuries would put it, our Shire Town, in both the literal sense of being the seat (alongside Brockton) of the county, and the location of judicial proceedings; as well as in the broader sense of being the regional demographic, economic, and cultural capital. In short, what happens in Plymouth matters not only to residents of that town, but also to her neighbors and sibling-towns as well. It’s a good thing for everyone to have a flourishing, vigorous press, both locally and beyond.