Sunday, October 31, 2010
Green Mountain Governor's Race May Leak Into Legislature
BURLINGTON, Vt. — Peter Shumlin, Democratic gubernatorial candidate, called yesterday for the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant to dramatically increase its extraction of contaminated groundwater from its site in Vernon, following news three days earlier that radioactive tritium was found in a well drawing from an underground aquifer and used for drinking water.
After they said NO MORE was leaking and they had fixed the problem!
“I have been saying for some time that the radioactive leaks at Vermont Yankee could be the largest man-made environmental crisis that Vermont has ever seen,’’ Shumlin said at a news conference, adding that plant owner Entergy Corp., based in New Orleans, must be held accountable for the costs of cleanup.
Yes, and FAR WORSE than any fart-misting warming!!
“Unless Entergy Louisiana is held accountable for this disaster, it could cost Vermonters millions of dollars and put the health and safety of thousands at risk,’’ he said. “Entergy Louisiana needs to take immediate steps to ensure that this crisis does not worsen.’’
It ALREADY IS! We just WON'T KNOW ABOUT IT for 20 or so years!
That's when the CANCER CLUSTERS, etc, begin to SHOW UP!
Shumlin, the president pro tem of the Vermont Senate and a longtime critic of the state’s lone reactor, also stepped up his criticism of his Republican opponent, Lieutenant Governor Brian Dubie, whom he called too friendly to Vermont Yankee and Entergy....
Vermont is the only state with a law saying the Legislature must approve the extension of a power plant’s license. Vermont Yankee’s extension request failed to get out of the Senate in February.
Related: Around New England: Vermont Votes Yankee Down
Then some state puke said don't listen to them.
The vote was taken a month after tritium leaks were first announced and after revelations that top plant personnel had misled state officials by saying Vermont Yankee did not have underground piping that carried, and could leak, radioactive substances like tritium.
Related: Around New England: No Veracity in Vermont
Also see: The Boston Globe Can Not Say a Lie
Well, that all depends....
Dubie has said he believes the decision on the plant’s future should be left to the state Public Service Board, which would issue a new state license for the plant, and to the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
“Brian has been very clear from the beginning that the NRC is going to be the one who will determine whether the plant is safe,’’ Kate Duffy, a Dubie spokeswoman, said yesterday. “This is a conversation that has to be driven by science and evidence, not politics and emotion.’’
Yeah, that is what you drive wars over!
And the science is pretty darn clear: the stuff gives you cancers, diseases, and kills you.
Shumlin called on Vermont Yankee to triple the number of pumps, from two to six, that it has been using to pull contaminated groundwater from the reactor site on the west bank of the Connecticut River since last winter. In January, officials announced that radioactive tritium, an isotope of hydrogen that has been linked to cancer if ingested in large amounts, had turned up in a test well at Vermont Yankee. Since then, other radioactive isotopes also have been found.
And it is IN the DRINKING WATER, great!
And HOW DO YOU THINK the FISH in the RIVER are DOING?
Plant spokesman Larry Smith said technicians at Vermont Yankee had pulled about 267,000 gallons of water from the ground in an effort to address the tritium leaks and expected to meet their goal of extracting 300,000 gallons by December.
Have they SHUT IT DOWN YET so that NO MORE LEAKS IN as they are pulling it out?
Shumlin said the new discovery — tritium found at 200 to 220 feet underground, far deeper than previous depths of 30 to 70 feet — should require the pumping to continue past December.
After they told us the problem had been fixed, sigh.
Smith noted that the new tritium measurement, about 1,040 picocuries per liter of water, was well below the Environmental Protection Agency’s safety standard for drinking water of 20,000 per liter.
Yeah, the government -- the same government that said the oil disappeared from the Gulf -- is tlling you the water is just fine.
He said there is no threat to public health and safety.
Then DRINK DOWN a LONG, TALL GLASS of it!
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Yeah, only made-up terrorists and phony plots are a "threat" to AmeriKa.
So who is going to decide the race, Vermont voters?
"Vt. lawmakers could decide tight gubernatorial race
MONTPELIER — For months, Democrat Peter Shumlin and Republican Brian Dubie have been wooing voters in hopes of becoming Vermont’s next governor.
But a constitutional quirk could have lawmakers — not voters — deciding who gets to succeed Republican Governor Jim Douglas, who is stepping down after four terms.
In Vermont, as in Mississippi, the winning candidate for governor must get more than 50 percent of the votes cast. If no candidate does so, the election goes to the Legislature for a vote. Georgia, too, has a majority requirement, but it results in a runoff election that puts the choice in voters’ hands.
Not in Vermont. Under the state Constitution, the election would be decided — in a secret ballot — by the 150 House members and 30 senators when they convene in January. Democrats currently control both houses.
Vermont statewide elections have ended up in the Legislature 22 times, most recently in 2002. Only twice have lawmakers not sided with the candidate who won a plurality at the polls.
This would be a bad time to disobey voters -- unless you want to lose your head.
This year, there are seven gubernatorial candidates on the ballot. A recent Vermont Public Radio poll had Dubie at 44 percent and Shumlin at 43 percent. The five independent candidates each captured about 1 percent.
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Related: Plymouth Rock Radioactive
Also see: Monday Memory Hole: The Face of the Peace Movement in Massachusetts
