Bob Stannard was standing in the Statehouse cafeteria Thursday when his phone rang. It was Gov. Peter Shumlin, calling to tell him that a federal judge had finally ruled on Vermont Yankee’s lawsuit against the state. Entergy, owner of the nuclear power plant Stannard had lobbied to shut down for five years, had won. The state had lost.
“I haven’t had a chance to read this tome,” said Stannard (pictured), glancing over the 102-page decision on his iPhone. “It appears we’ll get nothing from Entergy except radiation and spent fuel. We get stuck with their waste.”
News spread quicky through the capitol Thursday afternoon after federal Judge J. Garvan Murtha ruled that the 40-year-old nuclear reactor can remain open past 2012, and that the Vermont Legislature pre-empted federal authority when it voted to shut the plant down two years ago. Stannard fought to close the plant for five years as the lobbyist for the Vermont Citizens Action Network. He witnessed a major milestone in 2010 when the Vermont Senate, led by then-Senate President Peter Shumlin, voted 26 to 4 against letting state regulators hear the plant’s petition for a 20-year license extension.
At the time, a series of radioactive leaks and false statements by company officials had Entergy on the run. But Entergy sued the state, contending that federal agencies, not states, had sole authority to regulate nuclear power. When Thursday’s ruling arrived in favor of Vermont Yankee, Stannard and other Statehouse denizens seemed disappointed, but hardly surprised.
As many anticipated, Murtha’s ruling will send the question of relicensing the Vernon nuclear plant back to the Vermont Public Service Board, the trio of appointed utility experts who will decide whether to issue VY a “certificate of public good,” or state license to operate. The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission has already granted the plant a 20-year license extension.
Gov. Peter Shumlin, who was en route to Park City, Utah to attend the Outdoor Industry Association Retailer Winter Market, released a statement condemning the ruling and Vermont Yankee.
“I am very disappointed in today’s ruling from the federal court,” the governor’s statement said. “Entergy has not been a trustworthy partner with the state of Vermont. Vermont Yankee needed legislative approval 40 years ago. The plant received approval to operate until March, 2012. I continue to believe that it is in Vermont’s best interest to retire the plant. I will await the Attorney General’s review of the decision to comment further on whether the state will appeal.”
The union representing hundreds of Vermont Yankee employees hailed the court’s ruling, stating that it “rings for truth and justice throughout Vermont.
“The bells are ringing in Windam County tonight,” Jeffery Wimette, business manager for IBEW Local 300, said in a statement. “Hundreds of hard working, skilled and dedicated employees are now able to continue working and keep their jobs to provide for their families. The IBEW Local 300 and other highly skilled employees who work at Vermont Yankee place the highest emphasis on safety to ensure the facility is safe for all who work and live in the area. If members of the IBEW had any doubt about VT Yankee’s safety, they would be the first to blow the whistle. I congratulate the employees of VT Yankee for standing tall and keeping their faith over the past two years. The law has prevailed, not the law makers.”
In his small office, Senate President John Campbell (D-Windsor), a lawyer by day, pored over the lengthy ruling on his desktop computer. Later, Campbell and House Speaker Shap Smith spoke to reporters outside the speaker’s office. Both leaders said they were still digesting the ruling.
Smith stressed that the state will continue to retain “other areas of jurisdiction outside of the public service board” over the plant, but he and Campbell said it’s too early to say exactly how the Legislature might use regulations or taxes to affect the plant’s future.
“Any decision made in haste will not benefit the state,” Campbell said.
Smith said that he is personally disappointed in the ruling but said he has “a lot of faith in our Department of Public Service and our Public Service Board to consider the interests of Vermonters and come to a good decision.”
Do the leaders view it as a blow against states’ rights?
“There are some concerns about whether states’ rights have been constricted,” Smith offered. “I am disappointed by the decision but I appreciate the state continues to have a voice through the Public Service Board.”
Campbell went further. “I think it is a deterioration of states’ rights,” he said. “I can’t help but think there are going to be many Vermonters out there who cannot understand why their state leaders, their state legislature, is unable to voice concerns they may have.”
Asked whether he thought the state should appeal the ruling, Smith said he would leave that to the governor’s staff and the attorney general’s office.
State Rep. Tony Klein (D-East Montpelier), a Vermont Yankee critic who chairs the House Natural Resources and Energy Committee, called the ruling a “clear example of the power that corporate America has over the people of this country.
“It’s a sad day for state’s rights and a sad day for America,” Klein said. “This is almost like corporate personhood. They tell you you have the right to give birth to a plant in your state. The state legislature has to give permission for a plant to be built. But now it seems they are closing down any avenue for the end of the life of that plant, even when its contract period expires.”
Click here to download the ruling.
This article appears in The Health & Fitness Issue 2012.
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Stannard: “It appears we’ll get nothing from Entergy except radiation and spent fuel. We get stuck with their waste.”
No, we get jobs, and corporate tax revenues, and property tax revenues, and revenue-sharing, and $ for the Clean Energy Development Fund, and the $ that VY spends on local vendors, and all the other money that VY pumps into the community, plus income and property tax revenues from all those employees, plus the $ that all those employees spend in the community.
Oh, and we would have had their electricity, too, if Vermont hadn’t foolishly gambled on trying to put VY out of business rather than negotiating with it. A gamble that has now been lost. Now we get to host the facility, but not get any of the electricity. Oh, except for the electricity we’ll be buying from them indirectly via the grid on the spot market, at higher prices. Congratulations.
indirectly via the grid on the spot market, at higher prices. Congratulations.
Oh, but I guess Stannard wins, though, since he got paid to lobby the legislature to make the foolish decision it made. Poor us, but lucky him.
However correct you may be today, it is questionable logic to not take into consideration exactly where the money is going to come from to clean up the mess, hopefully not on the scale of Japan or fracking level, that the next generation is going to be forced to deal with. The electricity is an issue that stands on its own…. not unlike the Conn river dams.
The issue of having complete control on the front end, but absolutely NONE on the back end – in the world of state’s rights- shows no logic at all.
I have to agree it was a dark day for Vermonters.
Tell that to the hundreds of well-paid workers who just had their jobs spared. Tell it to the Brattleboro area Chamber of Commerce where all those workers buy homes and cars and meals and other things. Tell it to all the businesses that supply goods and services to VY. Seems like a very bright day to me.
Sutton_Hoo writes: “Oh, and we would have had their electricity, too, if Vermont hadn’t
foolishly gambled on trying to put VY out of business rather than
negotiating with it.”
Vermont’s utilities spent over two years trying to negotiate a deal with Entergy. The best deal on offer was for 115MW of power at a price beginning at 6.1 cents and it was predicated on the utilities relinquishing part of their share of any excess revenues from VY AND on the Enexus deal moving forward.
Instead, the utilities replaced the power with electricity from Seabrook and other sources, all at considerably less than $61 per MW.
To Sutton_Hoo: You do realize, of course, that after March 21 of this year the relationship with VY comes to end, even if the plant should continue to operate. The revenue sharing, money for the Clean Energy Fund is over. You are correct that they will still pay property tax, but what they are paying is much less than the true value of the plant.
No, we would not be receiving electricity from them no matter what happened in court. The contracts with VY expire on this day and Entergy had no desire to sell power to Vermont. The utilities went out and found more power at less than what VY was offering.
In exchange for a few jobs we will get the benefit of hosting a high-level, nuclear waste dump; something that no Vermonter ever bargained for. We will also get the benefit of wondering and waiting for the next debacle at this plant and hope and pray that it can operate safely under the watchful eye of a corporation that cares for only one thing; money.
WHen this plant is no longer economically viable, which may come sooner than we think if they are forced to implement upgrades as a result of Fukushima, you can rest assured those good jobs to which you refer will be gone. The employees, who have been used as pawns by Entergy, will be thrown under the bus.
@ Stannard:
1. Wow, for someone who makes his living attempting to influence legislators about Vermont Yankee, it’s amazing how much you just don’t know. According to the court decision that just came out, the revenue sharing deal with Vermont utilities DOES continue after 2012 if the plant is relicensed.
Also, there’s no reason to believe that the Clean Energy Development Fund couldn’t have continued also, if Vermont from the beginning had taken a friendly, negotiation approach with VY rather than a hostile, persecution approach of “we will shut you down at all costs.”
2. You say, “We will also get the benefit of wondering and waiting for the next
debacle at this plant and hope and pray that it can operate safely under
the watchful eye of a corporation that cares for only one thing; money.”
Gee, I guess you forgot that less than two years ago, Shumlin’s blue ribbon independent safety commission, which he staffed with his pal Arnie Gunderson in the expectation of getting a pre-determined outcome that the plant wasn’t safe, actually found that the plant was being operated safely and reliably, and could continue to do so into the future. Yes, we all know that Shumlin then ignored his own commission’s findings in his zeal to shut down VY because it isn’t “safe” or “reliable.”
And why are you criticizing Entergy for wanting to make money? Are you lobbying against VY for free? No, you’re getting paid to do it.
@ Greenberg: Aren’t you the guy who insisted over and over that no judge could ever possibly rule in VY’s favor in this lawsuit? Why should anyone take you as a credible source in saying that VY didn’t offer the Vt. utilities a good power deal? The court’s opinion seems to think they did make a very good offer in February of 2010. There are many possible reasons why no deal was reached.
Entergy is not going to continue to voluntarily contribute to the CEDF.
Entergy has a history of not honoring agreements. We should not expect them to honor any revenue sharing agreement(s). Note that currently the utilities have been forced to sue Entergy to get them to honor their commitments after Entergy allow its cooling towers to collapse and couldn’t fulfill their power obligations. That should tell you something (should you care to hear it).
I suggest you read the CVA report. Had you done so you would know that the report concluded that the plant could operate safely if it addressed 87 points of concern raised by the panel. There points have not all been addressed and if history is any indicator they most likely will not be.
Yes, I’m a paid lobbyist. So what? Perhaps you would like to share with us your real name and what you do. Having said that I don’t particularly care. It’s Sunday. I’m going to go watch the playoffs. You have fun Sutton_Hoo-ever-you-are.
I guess what you’re saying is, you were simply wrong about the revenue-sharing agreement not continuing after 2012? As a lobbyist, why should legislators pay attention to what you say, since you speak with lack of knowledge of, or disregard for, the facts.
And you say, “Entergy has a history of not honoring agreements.” The shoe is on the other foot. It is the State of Vermont that has such a history.
So tell us a little bit about yourself, Sutton_Hoo. What kind of name is that? What do you do for a living? Where do you live? Are you a flack for Entergy hiding behind an alias and carrying their water here on this blog?
You failed to respond to my comments about the CVA and your misleading statements, but then again, I have come to expect this from people like yourself who feel as though they have to hide from the rest of us and take shots from the shadows.
Sorry to disappoint you, my friend, but I do have a pretty good handle on this issue, and whether you agree with that or not I could care less. Go look at the facts and you will come to see that it has been Entergy that has tried everything possible to distance itself from this plant and the liability that it holds.
As for investing any more time in you, I don’t believe that there’s any return in it, so I wish you well.
It is you who falsely stated that revenue sharing ends in 2012. And you ignore that Shumlin’s own hand-picked panel of VY critics found the plant safe and reliable. You don’t give a damn about the truth. Keep taking people’s money to oppose VY and keep ignoring facts you don’t like.
I stand corrected. The RSA is still on the table after March 21st, however it has no value due to the fact that the market rates are so low and most likely will continue to remain so for some time. You do know how long the RSA is good for, right?
Again, the CVA did not conclude that the plant was reliable to operate for 20 more years as is. There were numerous conditions put forward in the report; few of which have been addressed. I’ve mentioned this once, so I must say that it is you who are not interested in learning the truth about that report.
BTW, you ignored my request to tell us a little bit about yourself. Why is that?
Sutton_Hoo: You needn’t take me as a source, credible or otherwise, for anything.
The deal I described above is a matter of public record. It is laid out in a letter sent to the PSB by Entergy VP Jay Thayer December 18, 2009 in lieu of the power contracts which were to have been presented on or by that date. It is the only official offer on the public record that I’m aware of, other than the much later offer of 10MW to Vermont Electric Co-op (only).
Unless I’m mistaken, footnote 22 in the Murtha decision concerns Feb, 2010 testimony concerning the offer made in the Thayer letter. The figures used by Mr. Thayer in his letter and later by Mr. Potkin in his Senate Finance Committee testimony to represent the value of the deal were, if nothing else, NOT undisputed.
Specifically, the testimony presented to the PSB by Vermont utilities concerning the value of the RSA differed by hundreds of millions of dollars from the value assigned to it by Entergy. (Compare the testimony of Bruce Wiggett (Entergy) to that of Doug Smith (GMP), and Bill Deehan (CVPS) in Docket 7440) Legislative testimony by Vermont utility representatives and outside consultants in the late fall/winter of 2009 also made it quite clear that their expectations of market prices for 2012 were considerably lower than those used by Entergy to calculate the supposed value of the PPAs being offered. As of now, the utilities appear to have been a lot closer to correct than Entergy both concerning the value of the RSA AND the market price of electricity in March of this year.
One of the many problems with Judge Murtha’s decision stems from his willingness to take at face value, without any further examination, purported “facts” offered to him by Entergy. This footnote is an excellent case in point.
Oops. Replying to Sutton_Hoo, not Bob Stannard. See above.
I should add that yes, of course, I was wrong in predicting confidently that a federal judge could not arrive at a decision as poorly considered as this one is. As Yogi Berra put it, “It”s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” My bad.
This comment should follow the one below, but I don’t know how to do that.
I am not a paid lobbyist (i.e., flak). I’m a citizen. Keep up the good propaganda, er, work.
” There were numerous conditions put forward in the report; few of which have been addressed. ‘
Yes of course, because Gunderson put forth a to-do list ( that the NRC isn’t concerned with ) then the plant can’t be safe.
Oh and for clarity, VY offered VEC a 20 year contract at BELOW market value…. THOSE BASTARDS !!! Had the state put politics aside and negotiated in good faith VTer’s would be benefitting from the plant. Now Entergy benefits. Nice Job to Smucklin and his cohorts who decided to (once again) overstep their powers, costing VTer’s in the end. Dopes.
Mr. jcarter1 – there is no point in attempting to carry on a discussion with you and/or Sutton_Hoo (not his real name) as neither one of you know of what you say.
You do, in fact, understand that the VEC board turned down VY’s lame offer with a near unanimous vote, right? Have you given a shred of thought as to just why that was? Might it been because it wasn’t such a good deal?
It was for only 10mgw of power at below market price for the first year. Also, FYI, the state does not negotiate with VY for power; the utilities do and they tried, without success, for three years to try to get an acceptable deal from VY. Ironically, they put a deal together with Hydro-Quebec and Seabrook to replace VY power in about three months. What’s that telling you?
Oh, it can’t be telling you anything…..because you don’t listen.
Now, having tried my best to assist you, let me say that I’m all done with you. As Sutton_Hoo (not his real name) has mentioned, I am a paid lobbyist working for an all-volunteer client (unlike Entergy who last year alone spent nearly 3/4 of a million on lobbyists). I get paid by citizens giving donations as opposed to corporations, and I work for my client. I don’t get paid to talk with you and already I’ve wasted more than enough of my personal time on you.
Have fun trashing me and blathering away amongst yourselves and simply know that I could care less about what you have to say, primarily because you’re wrong and don’t care to listen to the truth.
I wish you both well.
Mr. Stannard, I don’t have to guess why VEC turned down the offer, it was stated. It was a referendum on VY. Not a bad deal, they just didn’t like VY. Not a good deal, but nevertheless, VY offered below market power to a VT utility that was screwed up by the idiots at the state house.
As for the length of time it took to negotiate a deal, it tells me on set of negotiations had 3+ years to occur and 1 had a lot less. It also tells me that VY was sick of the shenanigans being played out and were not interested in playing nice with folks who were spewing hate and threats at them. Can’t say as I blame them. After all, they are a business not a charity… a business that knows they can sell it for more then what was being offered by the side threatening to support a shut down if they don’t give it up for free.
Since you are done with the conversation, good day and good luck finding another catastrophe to manufacture.
@ Stannard: Your clients may volunteer, but you don’t. You take their money to lobby, and then get the facts wrong. Good gig you got going there. Congrats. It’s a good thing there’s a big bad company out there than you can create a bogeyman out of for filthy profit. It’s a good thing you can prey and profit on peoples’ fear and ignorance and prejudices, or else you’d just be an unemployed former garbage company owner. The irony is killing me.
People (this goes for all of you): Settle down. Go after the argument, not the person. Thanks.
As usual, J Carter has no idea what he’s talking about. The teaser rate in the contract offered to VEC is currently substantially above market. After the first year, the contract was market based.
John,
From the VEC press release
“Johnson, VT- Vermont Electric Cooperative’s (VEC) board of directors
rejected a twenty-year power offer from Entergy to purchase electricity
produced at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant at below market
prices”
I guess the VEC has no idea what they are talking about?
The press release appears to have been issued in December, 2010. Both Entergy and whoever wrote the press release obviously thought that power prices would be higher than they are by now. Like Yogi Berra said, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”
The contract was for 4.9 cents per kwh in the first year. ISO-New England reports that power prices for 2011 averaged 4.66 cents, and for last month, 3.4 cents.
Now even you, J. Carter, should be able to figure out that regardless of what the press release says, 4.9 cents is HIGHER than where the market is, and we are now about 2 months from the beginning of the contract.
It is possible that in the next 2 months, market prices will rise dramatically and stay higher for the next year, but it is not very likely.
Accordingly, this contract, which was (just like Entergy’s previous offer of 6.1 cents in late 2009) expected to be below market is, as a matter of high probability, actually above market. I’ll give Yogi the last word: “The future ain’t what it used to be.”
Um, the point is that the deal was thought to be a good one at the time, and VEC rejected it for reasons other than economics. Greenberg, you’ll say anything. You would argue with Jesus Christ himself. You just won’t stop. No one but you knows anything about VY, about the electricity market, about the law, or about anything.