Indian Point Community Forum

A forum was held at the Greenburgh Town Hall this past Monday night. Walking toward the Town Hall entrance, ABG noticed a group of people under the canopy and someone was speaking. The man speaking at the microphone was quoting someone who had said Indian Point could have a meltdown as no one can guarantee with 100% certainty that no accident, such as the one at the Fukushima Nuclear Plants in Japan, might not happen here. What he didn’t say was that the accident he was referencing at the Fukushima Nuclear Plants were the result of a double whammy of an earthquake and a tsunami. What might have been less sensational and more appropriate would be to specify that while Indian Point is relatively safe from tsunamis, the water cooling system failure is more likely to fail and a more realistic issue to address. But will that get as loud a cheer from the crowd or sell more newspapers? Probably not.

For those who regularly participate with any meeting run by Supervisor Feiner, you know that you must sit through a litany of unrelated presentations and blather prior to the meeting. He will be posturing(campaigning) with kids, entertainers, artists, poets, et al., before the real work/meeting is begun. Tonight would prove no different, with a prayer for the waters, a flutist, peace walkers and others. One exception was that this forum was not a cable televised event. Because it wasn't televised, we were compelled to attend. We can avoid the drudgery he’s transformed the Board meetings into as they are televised. Watching the televised Board meetings allows us to use our time efficiently, actually accomplishing something why The Paul plays his games. 


The Supervisor addressed the crowd briefly and proceeded to lie to them. He stated that he didn't know of an evacuation plan and what should he do, his wife and daughter do if it were implemented. It played well with the crowd. Unfortunately, we know all communities were given cases of evacuation plan booklets by the County for distribution. Most Westchester fire departments have them. Hey Paul, the Greenburgh schools are an evacuation receiving location for buses carrying kids from the Indian Point area schools. Get your decontamination teams ready...

After entering Town Hall, the three of us picked up the assorted literature spread across several tables, quickly reviewing it and forming a consensus that this was to be an anti-nuke, anti- or close Indian Point rally, not really a forum for information, and more of a political ploy for the Supervisor’s relentless campaigning. We attended in hopes of hearing two or maybe three sides of the issue to learn more about nuclear energy, Indian Point, our power grid, Entergy, ConEd, safety risks and solutions as well as the 10-mile evacuation radius.

Numerous County Legislators have drafted a bill to increase the evacuation radius to 50-miles. Momentarily forgoing how impossible this may be to implement, ABG feels it’s disingenuous on the legislator’s part to arbitrarily choose a 50-mile radius without hearing and assessing all information - from all sides. They claim that the American people in Japan, near the Nuclear Plants were told if they were within a 50-mile radius of the Fukushima Nuclear Plants, they should evacuate. Now that the defecation has hit the ventilation, and they didn’t know what they were up against, this may have been adequate advice (maybe even the best advice). In time, we may also learn it was not. We’ll see. But, it’s better to err on the side of caution.

Perhaps there are problems with our evacuation plan for Indian Point and the surrounding areas, perhaps not. What we don’t need though, is knee-jerk, reactionary, ill-informed legislators acting without real knowledge. Which also begs the obvious question; can legislators be well informed enough to make decisions as critical as these? We doubt it. There will be  impacts once they enact any legislation. We’ve thought of some of the obvious:

1) their 50-mile radius exceeds the jurisdictional boundaries of Westchester County. Fifty miles will touch numerous other counties and communities that they cannot legislate to.

2) the cost for a new study by all the same experts all over again. 

3) Why wasn’t the original evacuation study by the County, done as a 50-mile radius when the study was initially performed and pared down to an appropriate distance once the study showed or proved something? Perhaps a 5-mile radius would be ideal, perhaps 35-miles; implementation of a 10-mile radius is difficult enough, how do we implement 50-miles?

Note: When there’s an accident on the Tappan Zee bridge, traffic flow slows or stops in every direction. When Officer Ridley was shot and killed in White Plains, a tragedy not used here lightly, traffic was gridlocked exponentially from White Plains. No one minded very much once we found out what had happened, and yet, we could only imagine what would happen if an IP event had occurred. Have you ever tried to "make time" on Route 6 in Peekskill on a Saturday? Traffic crawls and any gain in this bumper to bumper traffic is considered a victory.

Ignorance is not always bliss. Our community leaders owe us better performance and realistic, not shrill, discussions and information about both (or all three) sides of the story. Supervisor Feiner did what he does best. He campaigned, and this is not what this should be about. Honest and open discussion, real information, presented with little or no bias is what the electorate deserves. We're reminded of the saying a local politician and community leader has used, VOTE. It stood for Voice Of The Electorate. We need a clear voice for, and a voice of, the electorate. After all, isn't that what it should be about? ABG believes so.