In Vernon, residents followed the news with dismay. Townspeople generally regard the plant as a good neighbor, and are loath to see it close. Mike Hebert, chairman of the Vernon School Board, has nothing but praise for Vermont Yankee, which sits directly across the road from the elementary school his grandchildren attend. The plant, says Hebert, sponsors a basketball team and donates food for the county’s annual hunger drive. “I can’t think of a nonprofit in the county that hasn’t benefited from VY,” he says. “It’s everything to this town.”
In January, Mike Ball, an engineer at Vermont Yankee and then-chair of the Vernon Selectboard, led a contingent from the town to the state capitol in Montpelier. They distributed fact sheets about tritium and Vernon, noting that Vermont Yankee is the largest taxpayer in the town and provides high-paying jobs to the region. Despite his efforts, Ball says, he felt the tide turning against Vermont Yankee.
Two weeks after Ball’s visit, Governor Jim Douglas, a longtime supporter of the plant, called for a “timeout” in the Vermont Legislature. “With so many ongoing investigations, unanswered questions, and my own unease with previous information we have received from Entergy management,” he said in a statement, “I can no longer ask legislators to vote this year on whether the Public Service Board should be allowed to decide the case for re-licensing.” Like many Vermonters, he had lost trust in the people running Vermont Yankee. But this was not the time for a vote, he argued.
Mike Ball hoped the Senate would wait. “There was no way the legislators could process all that information and make a rational decision,” he says. In his view, a legislative vote would prevent the Public Service Board from doing its job. “Let the technical people make the technical decision,” he says. “Don’t let the nontechnical people make an emotional decision.”
Of course, most people’s views on nuclear power are influenced by emotion. Once there was contaminated groundwater, the battle – regardless of the actual danger to public health – was probably lost.
Despite the governor’s plea, Shumlin and the Senate marched ahead with the vote. On February 24, hundreds of Vermonters crowded the state capitol to watch the debate. Outside, opponents of the plant stood in the snow holding protest signs. James Moore’s group supplied a custom-made, 12-foot-high, inflatable caricature of an aging cooling tower sporting spectacles, a bandaged nose, and Depends.
After four hours of debate, the Senate voted 26 to 4 to block re-licensing. Senator Shumlin, a charismatic politician who leans forward to make a point, calls the vote an act of courage. “This is what democracy is intended to be,” he says.
Read more about Peter’s work on energy issues and the Vermont energy debate…
Photo: Mark Wilson/Boston Globe Staff
Share
