Environmental Disasters: Following Fast and Following Faster
The crisis in the Gulf shows a lack of responsibility for the?natural world?and a lack of laws in place to protect it. For 30 years BP has funded research for drilling further and deeper offshore but has not funded research that would improve the technology of its cleanup efforts when a massive spill like this occurs. No government agency has required that they develop the technology either.
Who are the victims of this catastrophe? Certainly not the upper management of BP, none of whom have yet been charged with criminal negligence and whose public statements clearly indicate that they answer to shareholders, not fishermen, coastal businesses or individuals and organizations concerned about the survival and future wellbeing of wildlife.
Whether it is risking catastrophic contamination by drilling for oil, blowing the tops of mountains off for coal or standing by as radioactive tritium from nuclear plants leaks into the soil, wells, rivers and the ocean, our energy policies have been proven archaic and should have, as other countries have shown, been deemed extinct long ago.
If anything good is to come about as a result of this crisis, it will be serious action which moves us promptly away from poisonous energy sources such as oil and nuclear by taking away the massive subsidies taxpayers have given these industries and reinvesting in technologies such as wind and solar. We could be much further along the path of providing clean and renewable domestic energy sources if our legislators had insisted on this long ago. The U.S. should be an innovative leader in energy policy and not stand by as the oil, coal and nuclear industries wreak havoc on the natural world.
Amelia Shea
Peterborough
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The catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico seems a world away from the struggle to shut Vermont Yankee in 2012, but the parallels are striking. The potential for a terrible failure of technology due to the negligence and greed of the corporate owners, and the weak oversight of federal watchdog agencies, reminds us that both deep-water offshore drilling and aging nuclear power plants are too risky for our communities.
We have lived through some huge environmental disasters that are now household names: the Exxon Valdez, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, as well as countess horrible coal-related accidents. The public has demanded and gotten some nominal regulation over the past four decades, but the agencies regulating the energy industry have been riddled with problems. The recent tragedy at Massey Energy’s Big Branch mine, the explosion in the Gulf, and our own tritium leak at Vermont Yankee all occurred because regulators were not doing their jobs. These federal agencies come loaded with people who are career employees of the industries they are supposed to be regulating. Many intend to return to lucrative jobs in the same field. They are reluctant to strictly interpret regulations or to find fault with personnel, policies or procedures.
As information is revealed about the permitting process and oversight of the oil drilling operation in the Gulf of Mexico, it is clear that the Minerals Management Service was not paying attention, and British Petroleum, Transocean, and Halliburton were left to drill and extract oil using whatever methods they thought would get the job done, including some disastrous shortcuts. BP was supposed to be prepared, as part of their permit to drill, to clean up any oil spills. We can all see how that worked out for them, for the residents of the Southeast coastal areas, and for the Gulf of Mexico. All the preventative technology and inspections were left up to the corporations. The regulatory agency was too busy collecting funds and perks from energy companies to do something as mundane as its job.
The easily extracted fossil fuels have been taken out of the ground. Oil drilling enterprises have moved into places less suited to safe and controlled operation. The nuclear power plants built during the initial excitement about the peaceful atom are aging badly and being pushed to produce power beyond their intended retirement dates. We are getting into dangerous, uncharted territory.
Vermont Yankee is a case in point. Soon after Entergy purchased the plant, they pushed for an “uprate,” meaning that Vermont Yankee has been operating at 120 percent of its intended capacity to produce power. In this time, we have seen the cooling tower collapse, the leak of radioactive water from a crumbling underground piping system, a condenser that needs a very expensive replacement, and countless other problems. This plant has the potential for a catastrophic event.
The huge volume of highly toxic radioactive waste on the shores of the Connecticut River is another potential source of a massive environmental disaster. Many areas have seen 100- or even 500-year flood events as climate changes occur and water levels rise. Do we have any assurance that the “temporary” storage for the tons of the most toxic substance on earth will never get into the river water in the case of submersion?
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is supposed to have the exclusive right to monitor safety issues at nuclear plants. We are not comforted by the fact that they only seem to regulate after something bad happens, and then the regulation consists of hollow words. The operating license of Vermont Yankee describes how the plant will not release unmonitored discharges of radioactive water. Yet when Vermont Yankee and other plants do just that, there are no negative consequences except when they are caught and exposed by concerned citizens and the media.
Let us learn from the nightmare unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico. We do not need to endanger the future of our children and our planet to power our lifestyles. Our society can make a decision to use power that does not threaten whole species, the oceans, the air we breathe, the soil in which we grow our food, and the rivers that sustain life. Even if the entire United States is slow to grasp this, the people of Vermont can and must repower our state and lead the way. We can use solar, wind, hydropower, and conservation and successfully shut down Vermont Yankee before we live through another disaster that defines the folly of nuclear power.
Nancy Braus
Brattleboro
More on Quabbin
I am writing in response to Dagen Julty’s letter last week which was critical of Quabbin Reservoir forestry. Although this letter is entirely my own, I do have some knowledge of the Quabbin as I work there for the Department of Conservation and Recreation as an environmental planner.
Mr. Julty’s supposition is that the Quabbin Reservoir and its surrounding lands are there for him to “find peace, beauty and natural splendor.” While many who venture into this “accidental wilderness” do have those experiences, that is not Quabbin’s purpose. In the early part of the last century, four towns—Greenwich, Enfield, Prescott, and Dana—were taken by eminent domain and flooded to create what is today Quabbin. The residents were required to leave their ancestral homes and watch while their houses were razed or removed and their graveyards emptied and relocated. These extraordinary measures were taken in the overriding public interest to provide drinking water to the greater Boston metropolitan area (today including 51 cities and towns). Their enforced sacrifice was for that purpose alone, not to create a wilderness, recreational, or spiritual area.
Today, Quabbin is managed as a drinking water watershed where the first and last priority is water quality. In addition to environmental regulation and extensive water quality monitoring, this includes highly supervised, goal-directed forestry to help achieve that end. For more information on land management planning for state lands at Quabbin, check the current plan at http://www.mass.gov/dcr/waterSupply/watershed/documents/2007QuabbinLMPCh3.pdf. To learn more of the theory and practice of watershed forestry, I suggest this web site: http://www.forest-to-faucet.org.
Jeff Lacy
MDC Division of Watershed Management
Quabbin Reservoir Field Office, Belchertown
