State May Lack Authority to Prevent Radioactive Water into Hudson

Assemblywoman Dana Levenberg and state Sen. Peter Harckham are certainly to be commended for their proposed legislation to prevent Holtec from dumping tritiated water into the Hudson, and especially for their commentary supporting the bill. I heartily agree that the psychological toll that it will take on the residents of the Hudson Valley is as damaging as the discharge of the radioactive water itself, especially since there are better, albeit more expensive, alternatives to Holtec’s plans.

However, even if the bill should pass, one very large question remains: Does New York State possess the legal authority to prevent such dumping in the face of existing federal regulations?

It is my understanding that, some decades ago, the federal government preempted the states and reserved to itself all regulation of radioactive materials and their impact on the public. As you are aware, at the last meeting of the Indian Point Decommissioning Oversight Board, the statement was made on numerous occasions that, while the state controlled non-nuclear discharges, control of radioactive releases is the purview of the federal government, most notably the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Thus, if Holtec’s discharges are within the limits of current federal regulations (which I believe they will be), they can proceed regardless of what the state may say or do. Clearly, a legal opinion regarding the state’s jurisdiction is imperative in this instance.

One additional area of exploration is whether the proposed discharge contains boron, which is often added to spent fuel pool water of the type Holtec is planning to discharge. If it is borated, the state may be able to prevent the dumping by focusing on the boron, rather than the tritium.

What seems to be missing from the current hullabaloo is the fact that an identical scenario has been playing out for the past couple of years at the Pilgrim Plant in Massachusetts, also being decommissioned by Holtec. However, in that instance the opposition to the dumping is being led by U.S. senators Markey and Warren and Congressman Keating in addition to all of the state and local officials and environmental and citizens’ groups. Yet Holtec remains adamant that they will dump the contaminated water into Cape Cod Bay.

Even though our officials and organizations have been aware of the situation at Pilgrim, and its parallels to Indian Point, for over a year, we have heard nothing from anyone until just recently. And where are our federal officials, senators Schumer and Gillibrand, former Congressman Jones and our current Congressman Lawler? Their silence has been deafening.

The absence of our federal representatives is especially disheartening because the major problem at Indian Point is the failure of the NRC to adequately regulate and oversee decommissioning projects. The NRC has continuously relaxed its regulations, granted numerous exemptions, etc., putting residents near these plants at greater risk than they might otherwise be.

Here too, Sen. Markey has tried to take the NRC to task for its lax regulation, but he has not received any support from New York’s federal officials.

So maybe our best course of action is to bring as much pressure as possible on our federal officials to simply get the NRC to do its job.

Joel E. Gingold
Croton-on-Hudson

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