Vermont Yankee Pollution
On
January 19, 2012 U.S. District Court Judge Murtha ruled that Entergy, the owners of Vermont
Yankee, would be allowed to continue operation beyond March of this year, overriding the
2010 vote by the Vermont Legislature to shut the plant down. But the same ruling affirmed
Vermont's continuing authority for oversight of other Yankee issues, like enforcement
of the Clean Water Act.
That's a ray of good news for those of us concerned with the environmental cost of the plant. Entergy Nuclear refuses to adequately use its cooling towers at Vermont Yankee, instead dumping hot water directly into our river and harming our wildlife. Many aquatic species require cool water to thrive and reproduce. Thermal pollution -- hot water discharges like the one at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant -- pose a serious threat to river ecology and diminish its ability to provide refuge to cold water species.
Take Action
Sign the petition Add your voice demanding that Entergy stop using the River as a dump and instead use their cooling towers to better protect the Connecticut and the fish and wildlife that depend on its cool waters. Don't like signing things online? Contact us and we'll mail you a postcard to make your feelings known.
Join us on Facebook Keep up to date and connect with other people who care about the Connecticut River. Upload your Connecticut River photos, or photos of your car sporting one of our new bumper stickers, and we'll make sure Entergy gets the picture: the Connecticut River is where we live and it shouldn't be treated as their dumping ground.
Spread
the word Turn your car, bike or binder into a conversation starter by displaying one
of our free CoolItEntergy.org bumper stickers pictured at right. You can also share
this page with your friends, on Facebook or over a cup of coffee, so that Entergy hears
loud and clear that the neighborhood is watching.
Become a member We rely on your support to respond quickly when pollution threatens our community resources. Without your support, we simply don't have the resources we need to respond effectively. Please donate now.
Why CRWC is involved
For well over 15 years Vermont Yankee has been permitted to raise the temperature of the entire Connecticut River up to 13 degrees during winter months and up to 5 degrees in the summer and fall. The nuclear power plant sends up to 543 million gallons of heated water, some of it at 105 degrees, into the river daily. That heated plume is shown to extend at least 50 miles downstream to Holyoke, MA.
In 2006 the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources allowed the nuclear power plant to further increase river temperatures. Although CRWC fought the increase all the way to the Vermont Supreme Court, Entergy was ultimately allowed to further raise the River's temperature during the summer when spawning American shad and young are very vulnerable to warmed habitats. Is it any wonder that American shad have declined by 99% since the 1990s in the Vernon Pool, the location of Entergy's discharge?
Next Step
Since Vermont Yankee has been allowed to do all this under an expired water quality permit, CRWC has petitioned ANR to begin the permit renewal process -- stalled since 2006. Now that the court has ruled that Vermont Yankee won't be shut down this March, it's time for the State to issue a new permit with tougher temperature standards for Yankee's discharges into the Connecticut.
CRWC believes there is good science to back up those tougher standards – better science than the narrow, slanted view Entergy's consultants provided the State of Vermont to justify heating up the river eight years ago. A soon-to-be-released CRWC-funded expert analysis of Entergy's case to continue dumping thermal pollution posed two simple questions: 1) Did Vermont Yankee accurately describe the size and extent of its plume of thermal pollution? And 2) Did Vermont Yankee provide enough information to prove they weren't threatening our fish, including Atlantic salmon and shad?
The answers – No, on both counts.
It's simple: when a power plant like Vermont Yankee wants to dump thermal pollution into our river they need to prove that it will not harm the critters living there. The Environmental Protection Agency has guidelines for how that should be done. In particular, EPA identifies five things that should be included in order to support a determination of whether or not fish communities will be harmed from a thermal discharge. Our experts found that none of the five were appropriately provided in Entergy's 2004 case.
Describing how a power plant's pollution affects a river and its fish and other inhabitants can be complicated. But on some levels, the scope of Entergy's 2004 study doesn't meet common sense. After their own 1978 study revealed their 55-mile-long thermal plume in the Connecticut River, in 2004 they decided the plume was only half of a mile long. They also only used a limited amount of temperature data and compiled it in a way to mask its potential variability.
With so much information available about the whole river and having hired enormous computing horse-power to be at their disposal, their entire approach to justify continuing to discharge thermal pollution is like buying a brand new Ferrari to impress your neighbors and only driving it in first gear. With the brakes on. Backwards. They simply aren't using the tools they have at their disposal in a way that will enable them—and all of us—to have a clear picture of the impact their pollution has on the Connecticut.
With this new evaluation in hand, we will be ready to provide the Agency of Natural Resources with an independent, citizen-backed case for why Vermont Yankee hasn't made their case for over 15 years of thermal pollution.
But you don't have to wait for the permit proceedings to join in our effort to improve the neighborhood. Join us in telling Entergy it's time to "cool it."
And please tell your neighbors.
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Photo credits (above): ©2011 CRWC
Image Credits at Right - Illustrations: Bill Singleton; Photos: ©Al Braden www.albradenphoto.com, CRWC Staff.
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