Proposal to shut Indian Point in summer sparks protest

• State hears views on proposal to shut Indian Point in summers
• Nuclear facility would close 42 days%2C 62 days or 92 days

CORTLANDT – A hearing on whether to shutter the Indian Point nuclear power plants during the summers to protect fish brought comments from throughout the Lower Hudson Valley and as far away as Brooklyn.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation said Indian Point would close an average of 42 days between May 10 and Aug. 10. But the agency also analyzed the costs of closing the plant up to 92 days.

The agency is exploring the idea as one alternative. Entergy, the plants' owner, opposes the DEC's preferred idea of creating a closed-cycle system, which would replace the open-loop system that siphons billions of gallons of Hudson River water daily. Entergy has proposed installing wedge wire screens to keep out fish instead, but the DEC has rejected the idea.

A group of business and labor organizations from the Hudson Valley, with community groups from New York City, held a rally to oppose the idea before the hearing held by the DEC, then spoke at the hearing itself.

They argued that the forced closures would come during the hot months when the region is vulnerable to brownouts and blackouts. They said that shutting the plant, which some argued seemed to be the ultimate goal, would cost jobs and raise electricity bills.

"Forcing Indian Point to shut down in the dog days of summer defies all logic," Sulma Arzu-Brown, a director of the New York City Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, said in the rally.

Opponents of the power plant said the shutdowns were the least that was needed. They said it would be better if Entergy built a closed-cycle cooling system. Their comments came with a measure of outright opposition to the plant itself.

"We can't plan a five-year budget, let alone dispose (of) and take care of and monitor something that is as deadly and as toxic as the plutonium and the radioactive isotopes in spent fuel," said Marilyn Elie of Cortlandt, director of the Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition. "We have to stop making it and look at that. There is a selfishness and a lack of morality involved when, as adults, we do not clean up our own mess."

Cortlandt Town Supervisor Linda Puglisi said the Town Board had passed a resolution objecting to the closed-cycle system, because it would entail building two cooling towers, each the size of Yankee Stadium.

About 20 people supporting Indian Point wore T-shirts from SHARE, or Safe Healthy Affordable Reliable Energy, and carried signs that said "No summer blackout!" and "Protect human health too!"

Opponents of Indian Point said the closed circuit idea was best, and could be constructed in ways other than building the two towers.

Sunny Amrer of Croton-on-Hudson, a member of the Raging Grannies organization, brought an unusual touch with a fish hand puppet, for which she provided the voice, in a song that went, in part: "Bring us solar, bring us hydro, bring us wind. Bring us energy from sources that won't end. Because we could trust uranium, we'd need holes in our cranium. We haven't yet gone that far round the bend."

The hearing continued in the evening, and the DEC plans to hold more in September and early next year.