Michigan’s Nuclear Utilities Steamroll Anti-Environmental Resolutions through County Commissions without Concerned Citizens’ Knowledge
All-Points-Bulletin to Grassroots Environmentalists:
Please Help Counter Consumers Energy/CMS and Detroit Edison/DTE’s Corporate “Astro-Turfing” on Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Dump Proposal Contact your County, City, and Township Boards. Provide them with the environmental perspective on these issues, rather than just the utilities’ concern about their own bottom line. Urge your local governments to oppose this corporate power play, and to consider passing a resolution OPPOSING the Yucca “illusion of a solution”: Yucca would lead to NO net decrease of nuclear waste from the Great Lakes shorelines for many decades into the future; Yucca would lead to many hundreds or thousands of risky high-level radioactive waste trucks and trains rolling through our communities as well as barge shipments upon Lake Michigan! How much sense does it make to take such transport risks when it won’t get rid of the wastes off the lakeshores, when it’ll cost a minimum of $58 billion, and when the Yucca site is woefully unsuitable for burying radioactive waste?
I can provide you with sample resolutions OPPOSING the bad Yucca plan, as well as additional back-up information on the transportation risks of hauling high-level radioactive waste, Yucca Mountain’s unsuitability, Yucca’s huge price tag, and documentation of the corrupt influence the nuclear power industry has exerted on the decision-making process from the very beginning. Please read below for additional information, and don’t hesitate to contact me if you have questions, concerns, or suggestions. Together, we can protect the Great Lakes environment, our communities, and our democracy from the ill-conceived Yucca Mtn. steamroller!
Sincerely,
Kevin Kamps
nuclear waste specialist
Nuclear Information & Resource Service
6930 Carroll Avenue, #340
Takoma Park, MD 20912
ph. 301-270-6477
fax 301-270-4291
kevin@nirs.org
www.nirs.org
(board member of Don’t Waste Michigan, founder and former director of the World Tree Peace and Justice Center and the Chernboyl Children’s Project in Kalamazoo)
ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
May 20, 2002
Dear Friends of the Environment in Michigan,
For several weeks, Consumers Energy and Detroit Edison have been lobbying County Commissioners and Township officials across Michigan — outside of public knowledge — to pass resolutions in favor of the national nuclear waste dump targeted at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Company lobbyists have provided these elected officials with sample resolutions and “fact sheets” containing falsehoods and deceptive statements (details below). Nine counties, as well as the Michigan Association of Counties, have fallen for it, taken the bait, and passed resolutions that match the utilities’ sample resolution verbatim.
This much we have learned thus far:
On Wednesday, May 15th Alice Hirt of Don’t Waste Michigan and West Michigan Environmental Action Council in Holland received a phone call from a reporter. The journalist asked what she thought about the resolution about to be passed that very day by the Ottawa County Commission in support of the proposal to dump the country’s high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. “What resolution?!” she asked. Despite watchdogging nuclear power and radioactive waste issues, it was the first she’d heard of it. Alice quickly phoned others in her community who have long been concerned about nuclear waste issues. She and two others hurried, but arrived at the County Commissioners meeting minutes too late: the vote to approve the resolution had already been passed. When Alice’s companions rose during the following public comment period to express their concerns about the Yucca Mountain proposal, they were cut off and the meeting abruptly adjourned.
(go tohttp://www.mlive.com/news/grpress/index.ssf?/xml/story.ssf/html_standard.xsl?/base/news-0/1021475703249130.xml for an article on the Ottawa County Commission debacle) Michael Keegan of Don’t Waste Michigan and Coalition for a Nuclear-Free Great Lakes in Monroe had a similar experience a week earlier. He uncovered that the Monroe County Commissioners had “informally” passed a pro-Yucca dump resolution behind closed doors — in violation of the Open Meetings Act. When he confronted the Commissioners with this as they were about to formally approve the already-agreed-to resolution at a public meeting, several Commissioners voted against the measure. The vote was 4 to 4, so the resolution did not pass. However, Detroit Edison pressured the Commission to re-vote at a later meeting. An amendment to the resolution was introduced, qualifying support for Yucca only if no extensions to reactor operating licenses were granted and no new nuclear reactors were built in the future. The Commission Chair declared that no amendments would be allowed. The resolution passed. Michael Keegan has reported that the Wayne County Commission has disapproved the resolution several times, but Detroit Edison is pressuring it too to re-vote. “If at first you don’t succeed,” twist their arms until you do!
This in-State corporate lobbying effort is in addition to the tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions to Congressional and Presidential candidates and incumbents, direct lobbying on Capitol Hill, and nationwide newspaper, tv, and radio advertizing blitzes that the nuclear power industry has mounted to push through the Yucca Mountain dump proposal.
The industry’s investment seems to be paying off. On Feb. 14th, Energy Secretary Spence Abraham (who had voted in favor of Yucca every chance he got while a US Senator from Michigan) gave his official thumbs up to the dump. The very next day, President Bush rubberstamped the plan. On May 8th, 13 of 16 of Michigan’s U.S. Representatives voted in favor of the dump: the House of Representatives’ override of Nevada’s veto of the dump now sends the decision to the U.S. Senate. You can bet that the offices of Michigan’s U.S. Senators, Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow, are hearing from nuclear power industry lobbyists, perhaps on a daily basis. Our Senators are certainly receiving copies of the flurry of county and township resolutions the nuclear utilities are churning out.
But the Yucca Mountain plan is not good for the environment, nor does it serve the public interest:
(1) Yucca will not get high-level radioactive waste off the shorelines of the Great Lakes.
(2) Yucca will become one of the biggest boondoggles in U.S. history, wasting many tens of billions of dollars of ratepayer and taxpayer money that could instead go to seeking REAL solutions to our nuclear waste problems.
(3) Yucca would involve moving the waste currently on Michigan’s shorelines out ONTO LAKE MICHIGAN ITSELF on barges, and RIGHT THROUGH countless Michigan communities on the roads and rails: shipments are vulnerable to severe accidents and terrorist attacks, which could release catastrophic amounts of radiation.
(4) For geologic and environmental justice reasons, Yucca is an unsuitable site for high-level radioactive waste burial.
RADIOACTIVE WASTE WILL CONTINUE TO PILE UP ON THE GREAT LAKES SHORELINES WHETHER YUCCA OPENS OR NOT
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) optimistically asserts that Yucca could open and begin taking wastes by 2010. But the General Accounting Office (the investigative arm of Congress) has reported that Yucca Mtn. could not begin to accept waste until 2015 at the earliest. Even then, the waiting list to ship waste to Yucca would be many decades long. According to DOE, during the first ten years after Yucca would open, Michigan’s reactors would only be able to ship 300 tons of waste to Nevada. Because the oldest waste would go to Yucca first and the Fermi 2 reactor was one of the last to come on-line in the country, it is at the end of the Yucca shipment waiting list and would not ship out ANY waste in the first decade. In addition, each of the operating reactors in Michigan would continue to generate 20 to 30 tons of high-level radioactive waste each and every year. What this means is that any waste shipped out of Michigan would be quickly replaced with newly generated waste. What this means is that, whether Yucca opens or not, high-level radioactive waste will continue to pile up and be stored on the shorelines of the Great Lakes for many decades to come. Yucca would not solve Michigan’s nuclear waste problem.
YUCCA: THROWING GOOD MONEY AFTER BAD DOWN A BLACK HOLE
In recent Congressional testimony, Energy Secretary Abraham said that about $4 billion has already been spent studying the Yucca site. However, DOE has admitted that the Yucca Mtn. price tag will top $58 billion. As there less than $20 billion in the ratepayer funded Nuclear Waste Fund, there will be a shortfall by tens of billions of dollars. U.S. taxpayers get to foot that bill, thus paying a huge subsidy to the nuclear power industry. Michigan residents would have to pay for the Yucca Mtn. boondoggle in their electricity bills and on their federal income taxes. We should stop wasting money at Yucca Mtn. and instead direct it toward seeking REAL solutions to the vexing problem of nuclear waste.
HIGH-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTE TRANSPORTATION IS RISKY
Nuclear waste is dangerous enough sitting still at reactor sites. Putting it on the roads and rails at 60 miles per hour
Yucca Mtn. is an active earthquake zone that leaks water like a sieve. Burying high-level radioactive waste there would guarantee contamination of the underlying drinking water supply. Besides its geologic unsuitability, Yucca belongs to the Western Shoshone Indian Nation according to the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley. The Western Shoshone and other Nevadans have already borne the brunt of nuclear weapons testing, and are sick (literally) and tired of their home being treated as a nuclear sacrifice zone.