It’s jobs vs. fish
For building trades union officials, the dispute between the state”™s environmental agency and the private nuclear power plant operator at Indian Point that could result in the plant”™s closing should be more of a jobs story than a fish story.
The state must choose between jobs for working-class families and caviar for the resident elite on the Hudson, labor leaders said in a recent show of support for the Indian Point Energy Center”™s owner, Entergy Inc., in its appeal of the Department of Environmental Conservation”™s denial of a water quality permit for the Buchanan plant.
The DEC this year said the plant”™s daily intake of about 2.5 billion gallons of river water for its reactor cooling system kills nearly 1 billion fish and fish egg and larvae annually and must be replaced with closed-cycle cooling towers. The towers also would eliminate environmentally harmful discharges of heated water back into the Hudson, DEC officials said.
Entergy officials contend plant operations have a minimal impact on the river and the company”™s alternative proposal to reduce fish kill, a state-of-the-art underwater screening system, would be far less costly and less time-consuming to build, at $100 million for an estimated 18-month project compared with an estimated $1 billion to erect massive cooling towers over several years. Entergy officials said construction of the state-ordered closed-cycle system would require a 42-week shutdown at the plant.
The state”™s water permit denial effectively blocks Entergy”™s bid to relicense its two nuclear reactors at Indian Point with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
“It”™s a sad situation, it really is,” said Jerry Connolly, a former boilermakers union official and spokesman for the metropolitan Coalition of Labor for Energy and Jobs. Connolly, who worked his first boilermaker job at Indian Point in 1968, spoke outside the first of two hearings held in Cortlandt Manor by two DEC administrative law judges to receive public comments before their decision on the Entergy appeal.
The afternoon hearing was largely dominated by supporters of Entergy”™s continued presence at Indian Point as a needed provider of emissions-free, reliable electricity for Westchester, New York City and the lower Hudson Valley and as a major employer and community donor that provides 1,100 permanent jobs on an annual cumulative payroll of $105 million and pays $34 million annually in state and local taxes.
Business advocates joining in the statements of support for Entergy included Westchester County Association President William C. Mooney Jr.; Paul Vitale, The Business Council of Westchester vice president for government and community relations; and Al Samuels, president and CEO of the Rockland Business Association.
“Nothing happens in a vacuum,” Samuels said. “This is not just an environmental issue; it”™s an economic issue.” As a generator of clean power that does not depend on fossil fuels, “Indian Point provides the energy that”™s needed by our economic development agencies to attract the kind of businesses New York state says it wants.” Closing the Hudson River plant “would devastate our end of the state,” he said.
“This is the one issue where the business community and the unions are absolutely in agreement: Indian Point must be maintained in our community,” Samuels said.
Connolly, the former business manager for International Brotherhood of Boilermakers Local 5, said the state denied the water permit only a decade after selling the Indian Point facilities to Entergy. “It”™s sort of like buying a car and being told you can”™t use it,” he said. “I think the state is making a big mistake.”
Connolly and other labor leaders said the state”™s action could result in more union job losses in the construction industry, where an unemployment rate of 40 percent feels more like a depression than a recession to workers and their families. “To try and harm, and try to eventually shut down Indian Point over the fate of Hudson River fish eggs, most of which die on their own anyway, is absurd, incomprehensible and shameful,” said Michael Tracey, business manager for International Association of Heat and Frost Insulators and Asbestos Workers Local 91 in White Plains.
Connolly said Entergy”™s stand at Indian Point is a test case in the state. DEC has ordered about 24 industrial manufacturers and energy producers to retrofit their cooling systems with the best available technology. The agency has estimated the price tag for those projects to total more than $8.5 billion.
“In short, Albany”™s priorities are more for caviar and less for jobs,” said Connolly. The message to struggling families sent from Albany, said Connolly: “Let them eat caviar.”