Indian Point Nuke Plant Going Gone?

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NY State Denies Key Permit to Entergy Corp for its Indian Point Nuke Plant

Entergy Corp has been denied a request for a water-quality certification for its Indian Point nuclear power plant in New York, without which it cannot operate the  plant.

Indian Point nuclear plant seen from across the Hudson River.

Indian Point Energy Center (IPEC) is a three-unit nuclear power plant (unit one was shut down in 1974) located in Buchanan, New York.  The plant is situated on the east bank of the Hudson River, 50km (31 miles) north of Manhattan. Owned and operated by Entergy Corp, the plant provides about a third of electricity for the New York metro area.

The state regulators said that the plant’s cooling systems “do not and will not comply with existing New York State water quality standards.” The denial took into account a proposal for modification made by Entergy.

The ruling said Indian Point’s two operating units consume about 3.5 trillion liters (915 billion  gallons) of water each year destroying 1 billion fish and fish eggs, including the endangered shortnose sturgeon, thus violating state laws and the federal Clean Water Act.

An endangered species, the shortnose sturgeon (Acipenser brevirostrum) is a small North American sturgeon which live  in about a dozen or so large river and estuary systems along the North American Atlantic seaboard. They spawn in fresh water, making Hudson River an ideal habitat, where the largest adult population of about 30 – 40,000 are found.  “Sucked in with enormous volumes of water, battered against the sides of pipes and heated by steam, the small fry of the aquatic world are being sacrificed in large numbers each year to the cooling systems of power plants around the country.”

The president of environmental group Riverkeeper, Alex Matthiessen, said the ruling was a turning point in efforts to stop Indian Point’s “environmental assault on the Hudson River and force the plant’s early retirement due to the risks its continued operation poses to public health and safety.” Reuters reported.

“We’re disappointed in the notice of denial, but we expect to have an opportunity to convince the DEC it made a mistake,” Entergy spokesman Jim Steets said, adding that  the company has 30 days to request a public hearing, and that it will appeal the decision by the Department of Environmental Conservation.

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• Indian Power Workers Drink Radioactive Water
• Three Mile Island Cats Have 9 Lives, Too?
• French Nuke Waste Plagues Siberia
• Q. How Can You Tell When Ecosystem Nears Collapse?

Coal Is Deadly

**PLEASE FORWARD THIS INVITATION OUT ON ALL LISTSERVS, MYSPACES … —EVERYWHERE!!**

THE APPALACHIAN BIOREGION NEEDS YOU!

MOUNTAIN JUSTICE SUMMER 2009 CAMP OUT MAY 16 – 22

HEARWOOD REGIONAL CAMP 2009 MAY 22 – 25

COAL IS DIRTY, DANGEROUS AND DEPLETING!

Y’all are formally invited to the 5th annual Mountain Justice Summer camp where activist and organizers come from all over to learn, educate, refresh and party to celebrate a summer of resistance to the pernicious process know as strip mining.

Join us! at this years camp in beautiful Harlan County Kentucky at Camp Blanton. You will be surrounded by old growth forest—and the heart of the resistance movement against the destruction of the magnificent ancient majestic mountains which surround you.

The end of the Mountain Justice camp kicks off the start of the Annual Heartwood Forest Council Camp May 22-25th. After a week of learning how to defend the most ancient mountains in the world stay and at the same place learn about defense of its forest!

Join us! as this camp kicks off the now annual summer campaign of resistance in the Appalachia bioregion to protect some of the oldest watersheds on earth. Come join us as we celebrate 5 years of continuous non stop resistance to the forces that would lay waste to our land and the people which belong to it.

Join us as we seek to take advantage of the changing political climate to create the pressure and visible resistance that will make it possible to capitalize on that climate.

After 5 years of resistance Mountain Justice now is at the cusp of making gains dreamed of during the darkest days of the Bush presidency. Now the agency heads are no longer from the industry they are supposed to regulate. Now agencies are being captured back from the industries that owned them up to now. Now is the time for us to take back the losses of the Bush years.

We are going to stop strip mining for coal with YOUR HELP. Come and help us forge a new energy future. Coal is a 19th century technology that hired a 20th century PR firm but this year we will rock the national with the truth that THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS CLEAN COAL!

Our planet is tied to the same crossroads as our species. As climate change becomes more damaging, as we gasp in cities dying deaths of slow asphyxiation from coal pollution as and entire community is wiped out by the toxic ash byproduct of this 19th century technology now is when we weigh in and make our choice.

Help us forge a new energy policy for our mountains, the planet the people which inhabit it. Now is the time, distance, speed and place where if we push back hard enough we can not only take back what was done during the Bush years—we can push forward into a new cleaner future.

Coal is dirty, dangerous and depleting is our message. Come join us to play, sing, learn and prepare to make a new path for our species. We need you now more than ever before because now is the time. We need writers, filmers, teachers, lawyers, artist, fishermen, 4 wheeler enthusiasts. If you have any skill—and are willing to work hard for the mountains of Appalachia we need you!

Help us preserve the most valuable resource of all—our highland watersheds. If you think the wars for oil are bloody—wait till you see the wars for water. Appalachia is the Saudi Arabia of WATER and it is that resource which the future is going to be most grateful when we end strip mining and the resulting annihilation of highland watersheds.

Please come prepared to camp—more importantly come with respect and a willingness to learn and work. We have fun—but this camp is a huge tool in the resistance and it’s a tool we need to do what its designed for—making strip mine corporations a living hell. We need people that are autonomous and can take care of themselves. You are coming into the Appalachian Mountains with a distinct culture which you will do fine with if you just come with respect.

If your even curious goto our website at mountainjustice.org and see what we are about. At the very least at the end of the week you will leave with new friendships, new knowledge and perhaps some new skills to help in the fight.

So join us! Grandmothers, Grandfathers, Aunts and Uncles students and teachers. We need an entire broad range of experience and have everything ranging from tent space to comfortable indoor lodge space and a massive kitchen. You will be comfortable, well fed, entertained and will walk away with an entire skill set.

Y’all come!

Mountain Justice

Information Services

(MJIS)

mountainjusticesummer.org

Circuit Judge OKs Mountain Rape

Virginia Court of Appeals Judge overturns a lower court ruling banning mountaintop removal

In view of reader interest in the issue, the following Reuters article is mirrored here.

U.S. court overturns ban on West Virginia surface mining

Fri Feb 13, 2009
By Steve James

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A U.S. Court of Appeals on Friday overturned a lower court ruling that had banned surface, or mountaintop, mining in West Virginia, according to court documents.

The ruling was hailed by the coal mining companies who have turned to mountaintop mining as an economical alternative to traditional underground mines in Appalachia where production is declining.

The environmentalists who brought the original case said they would assess their next legal move, but vowed to fight on against the mining method which basically slices the top off hills and mountains.

Stock in Massey Energy Co which brought the appeal with the U.S. Corps of Engineers, was up 7 percent in late trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

The 4th Circuit judges in Richmond, Virginia, reversed a ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Robert Chambers, who had found that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had not fully evaluated the potential environmental damage before approving permits for mountaintop mining for four mines operated by subsidiaries of Massey.

“We reverse and vacate the district court’s opinion and order of March 23, 2007, and vacate the district court’s injunction,” Friday’s opinion said.

It said that under existing regulations, the state of West Virginia has “exclusive jurisdiction over the regulation of surface coal mining and reclamation operations.”

The appeal had been brought by Massey and the West Virginia Coal Association. Surface mines account for about one-third of coal from West Virginia and half of that from Kentucky.

“We’re pleased with the court’s decision,” said Roger Hendriksen, director of investor relations for Massey.

Judge Chambers had originally ruled in favor of a petition filed by a number of groups led by the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition. (OVEC)

Basically, OVEC contended that the Corps of Engineers had violated the Clean Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. Since then, the Corps has effectively frozen so-called 404 permits for surface mining.

Janet Keating, executive director of OVEC said: “We are deeply disappointed with the court’s decision. We will assess our next step, but obviously we will continue to organize against surface mining.”

In their ruling the appeals judges said basically that the Corps of Engineers had acted within regulations in place. “We cannot say that the Corps’ assessments of stream functions in the challenged permits were arbitrary and capricious.

“It is not our place to dictate how the Corps should go about assessing stream functions and losses,” they said.

Analysts had said if the ruling was upheld, Appalachian coal prices could spike and producers with a significant amount of surface exposure in Appalachia could get hurt.

Several mining companies — Massey, International Coal Group, Alpha Natural Resources and Patriot Coal Corp — would lose production if the ruling went against the miners, the analysts said.

[Note: The interest of mining companies are falsely represented as the interest of miners, despite the environmental and health hazards that plague the mining communities. FEWW]

One analyst Mark Morey, director of power systems strategy for Allstom Co Ltd said investors might hold off until the issue had been definitively resolved.

“Decisions like this are long term, so if you have any uncertainty, that’s still gonna guide what your investment is.

“Does this ‘overturn’ mean they can have a whole new round of capacity? People have been thinking this decision might be held up anyway so they’ve been making decisions for the past two years with this hanging over their heads.”

(Reporting by Steve James; editing by Carol Bishopric)
© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

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