Tag Archives: Vermont Yankee

The Inaugural Address: A pretty good start

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The speech by Governor Shumlin — which he billed as the first of two parts — included some welcome elements. It left a lot unsaid; presumably he will confront property taxes, school governance, health care, and government spending in his budget address next week.

Today’s address focused on two areas: energy, and the environment. In the latter category, his primary focus was on Lake Champlain. It was, if I recall correctly, the first time he’s drawn attention to these issues in a major January speech. To me, it’s a welcome development.

It’s also an opening for him to regain some credibility among liberals. When Peter Shumlin was running for Governor in 2010, his two big issues were single payer health care and the environment (climate change, green energy and Vermont Yankee). But while his administration has made some good incremental gains on the latter issues, they’ve never seemed to get the spotlight. Now they have.

With single payer off the table, perhaps Shumlin is returning to his other signature issue and hoping to put his stamp on Vermont’s future on energy and the environment. If he can’t be the single-payer governor, perhaps he can be the environmental governor. It’s a good strategy.

The caveat, of course: Now he’s gotta deliver.

He also opened the door to raising taxes as part of the effort to close a $100 million budget gap. In a brief preview of next week’s budget address, he said this:

We cannot simply cut our way out of our fiscal challenge year after year – taking away services that are important to so many Vermonters. Nor can we tax our way out of the problem.

Which would seem to indicate that his plan will include a mix of cuts and “revenue enhancements.” I’d urge him to take a long look at the plan that nearly passed the House a couple years ago, which would have raised taxes on the wealthy (by closing loopholes and limiting deductions) and provided some tax relief to the middle and working classes. I say “nearly passed the House” because it was stopped in its tracks by Shumlin’s stubborn opposition.

As for the details on energy and the environment:

The centerpiece on energy is a new renewables strategy, as the current (and, in some circles, controversial) SPEED program is sunsetted in 2017. The Energy Innovation Program is aimed at further boosting our investment in renewables and energy efficiency. Shumlin called the EIP “our single biggest step so far toward reaching our climate and renewable energy goals.”

Sounds good. We await the legislative process with anticipation and a bit of trepidation.

On Lake Champlain, Shumlin came up with a decent-looking package. It doesn’t go far enough, but it’s better than anything he’s offered before. He realizes, as he told the legislature, that if the state fails to meet EPA muster, we’ll face some burdensome federal regulations.

His plan includes:

— New transportation funding to curtail runoff and erosion around our roads and streets.

— New funding and technical assistance for farmers and loggers, to help them meet water-quality standards.

— More thorough efforts to enforce current water quality regulations.

— Making a change in the Current Use program, which would take away that tax break from farmers who fail to reduce pollution.

As for funding, his plan includes two new fees: One on agricultural fertilizers, and one on commercial and industrial parcels in the Champlain watershed.

The revenue would go into a newly created Vermont Clean Water Fund, a repository for state, federal and private funds. The first private money, he announced today, is a $5 million donation (over the next five years) from Keurig Green Mountain, which Shumlin called “a company that depends upon clean water.” He expressed the hope that KGM’s generosity will “inspire others.”

If he can leverage substantial donations from the private sector, his plan could accomplish quite a bit without too much stress on the state’s bottom line. Maybe enough to get the EPA off his back, at least for a while.

From this liberal’s point of view, it’s a good start. But as VPR’s Bob Kinzel said today, the Governor effectively served us dessert before dinner. Next week’s budget address will be a much less appealing dish. Plenty of mushy steamed vegetables scattered around a hunk of gray meat.

Beyond that, well, actions speak louder than words, and we’ve heard plenty of words from this Governor in the past. The political question is: Can he deliver on this agenda in a way that will repair his reputation for effective governance and bring liberals back into the fold? He can; but will he?

Closing time

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Shoutout to my favorite one-hit wonder of all time…

So gather up your jackets, move it to the exits

I hope you have found a friend.

Closing time

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end

And here we are, on The Last Day of Vermont Yankee. Or, as @GovPeterShumlin put it:

Yeah, well, as if.

Problem: today is not “the end of years of controversy.” It is, in the questionably immortal words of Semisonic, “some other beginning’s end.”

What ends today is the productive phase of Vermont Yankee’s history. What begins is the long slow wait for decommissioning. The chances of an accident will diminish, but we’ll still have a whole lot of hyper-toxic stuff SAFSTOR’d on the banks of the Connecticut River.

Look at it this way. The “lifespan” of Vermont Yankee was 42 years. The “deathspan,” if I may coin a word, will be AT LEAST 30 years. That’s the optimistic forecast for decommissioning. And that’s heavily dependent on the always-reliable, ha ha, stock market: Entergy’s decommissioning fund sits at $665 million, a little more than half the estimated cost of decom. Entergy says it won’t start decom until the fund grows to cover the entire (estimated) $1.24 billion price tag.

But hey, the markets always go up, right?

The way Entergy puts it, they’re doing us a big fat favor by planning the decom for the 2040s. By federal standards, they don’t have to do it until 2075.

Sixty years away.

In that scenario, the “deathspan” of the plant will have been 50% longer than the lifespan.

That’s the problem with nuclear energy. I’m not necessarily against nukes; if managed correctly, they do provide reliable carbon-free power. But there’s that long, lingering afterlife — and corporate America has never shown much dedication to long-term responsibilities.

Nor has public America, for that matter; we have yet to devise a long-term storage plan for all that nuclear waste.

Anyway, I suppose @GovPeterShumlin is only doing what a governor has to do: putting the best face on a decidedly mixed reality.

But I’d be very surprised if this was, in fact, “the end of controversy.”

And in the words of Semisonic, wherever they are today:

I know who I want to take me home,

and it ain’t Entergy.

Sometimes, no matter what the cost, you just gotta make a stand

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In the course of human events, there comes a time for a single heroic action that can spell the difference between ruination and glory. At moments like these, great figures arise, making statements that ring true across the centuries, imspiring new heroes with the sheer power of their words.

“I regret that I have but one life to give for my country.” — Nathan Hale

“Don’t give up the ship!”  — James Lawrence

“Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!”  — David Farragut

“I shall return!” — Douglas MacArthur

“We will bury you!” — Nikita Khruschchev

Oops, I don’t know how that last one got in there. Sorry. But you get my drift.

And today, in the midst of desperate times, another hero strode forth:

Screen Shot 2014-09-30 at 4.55.42 PM

“I stand by my retweet.” George S. Patton couldn’t have said it any better.

Really, I’m glad I wasn’t drinking coffee when I read that, because I would have had hot java up my nose and down my shirt.

A bit of context, for those just joining us. Earlier today, I wrote about a fatally flawed essay by James Conca of Forbes Magazine, which blamed rising energy prices in New England on “Vermont’s choice” to close the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant.

Which is nonsense; the plant’s owner pulled the plug for financial reasons. But that didn’t stop Vermont conservatives, who should know better, from latching on to the erroneous column. One of the guilty was Darcie “Hack” Johnston, hapless campaign consultant, who eagerly retweeted a link to the Concatenation. And when I noted the duplicity of glomming onto a fundamentally flawed essay, Johnston issued her broadside.

“I stand by my retweet.”

That’s gotta be one of the most ridiculous attempts at inspirational rhetoric I’ve ever seen.

Go ahead, @DarcieLJ. Stand by your tiny evanescent masterpiece.

When a crucial omission becomes a Big Lie

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On Monday, the Forbes website posted a piece by columnist James Conca entitled “Closing Vermont Nuclear Bad Business For Everyone.” Judging by Conca’s oeuvre, he is a complete apologist for nuclear energy… but that’s not my point here.

My point is the fundamental dishonesty of his column, based upon one crucial omission. And I quote:

Two electricity distribution companies in Massachusetts and New Hampshire announced electricity rate increases for this winter. This collateral damage results from Vermont’s choice last year to close the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant. That choice has hurt rate-payers in their neighboring states.

Catch it? “Vermont’s choice.”

As anyone with the most glancing exposure to the facts could tell him, it was not Vermont’s choice to close Vermont Yankee. It was plant owner Entergy’s choice, For financial reasons having to do with changing market forces, not with Vermont’s overzealous radical socialist hippie-dippie hatred of Big Nuke.

Sure, Vermont had a more skeptical regulatory eye than other host states. Completely justified, IMO, because of Entergy’s terrible track record as plant operator. But Entergy made the decision to close VY on its own. It was a surprise to everyone in Vermont, because it came in the midst of Entergy’s full-court-press legal battle to keep VY open. Indeed, by all indications, Entergy was very likely to win the case and a 20-year license extension.

Mr. Conca is either criminally uninformed for an energy columnist at a major publication, or he’s ignoring the facts to suit his argument. In short, he’s either stupid or a liar.

All that is bad enough. But now, at least three members of Vermont’s terminally frustrated conservative minority have picked it up.Screen Shot 2014-09-30 at 10.58.34 AMScreen Shot 2014-09-30 at 11.20.05 AM

Ah, the immortal Tayt Brooks, former Douglas Administration functionary, former secretive head of the very secretive Lenore Broughton’s failed SuperPAC, Vermonters First, now the Vermont rep for American Majority, part of the Koch Brothers’ far-flung empire of innocuously-branded nonprofit organizations.

And then there’s Brian Keefe, bagman for Central Vermont Public Service. Retweeted by serially failed campaign consultant Darcie “Hack” Johnston, currently serving as unpaid consultant to the Dan Feliciano campaign.

As an outsider, James Conca may have the slightest figleaf of deniability for basing his argument on a canard. But Brooks, Keefe, and Johnston cannot possibly claim ignorance.

No, they’re spreading this column around because it suits their political interests, regardless of how it misrepresents the real situation.

I’m sure this is just the beginning of Vermont conservatives’ efforts to trumpet Conca’s essay as more proof of the evil Democrats’ anti-business agenda. Even though they know full well that the entire column is built on a foundation of quicksand.

Rob Roper? El Jefe General John McClaughry? “Super Dave” Sunderland? Scott Milne? Dan Feliciano? I’m lookin’ at you.

The Milne Transcripts, part 6: The supreme importance of tone

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Yet another installment in my reports on Scott Milne’s rather disastrous July 25 appearance on WDEV Radio’s Mark Johnson Show. It was his first in-depth interview since formally launching his campaign for Governor. As such, it provides a window on the motivations, priorities, and political skills of the likely Republican nominee. 

Vermont Yankee wasn’t on Mark Johnson’s agenda. After all, it’s a fait accompli; Entergy stopped fighting to keep VY open when low natural-gas prices made it a financial loser, and a closing date has been announced. But Milne brought it up unbidden while trying to deflect attention away from a very unflattering discussion of health care reform, in which he appeared to confuse Vermont Health Connect with single-payer health care. (The former is operational, albeit troubled; the latter is Governor Shumlin’s yet-unattained Holy Grail.)

Milne was critical, not necessarily of the shutdown itself — he remained carefully neutral on that — but on the Shumlin Administration’s “tone.” Which, it seems, is one of the biggest bones Milne has to pick with his prospective opponent.

The tone and the style with which the Shumlin Administration went forward with that… we’re going to end up with a nuclear toxic slum on the banks of the CT River for probably 65 years or whatever the maximum decommissioning time is.

…Iif we had a Governor who was much more, in tone, business-friendly and working cooperatively to fix problems even with people that you disagree with, we could have given them a license extension. In exchange, gotten them to pony up the money for the rapid decommissioning.

Mmm, yeah, a couple problems with that. First, Entergy has never shown any willingness to adequately fund VY’s decommissioning; they’ve always played for the maximum amount of time. Given Entergy’s track record, it’s extremely doubtful that a different “tone” would have induced them to agree to a very costly proposition.

Second, Entergy stopped fighting for VY because it had become a financial drain. Why would they agree to commit hundreds of millions of dollars to the decommissioning find at a time when VY was already hurting their bottom line?

For Scott Milne to believe he could have convinced them otherwise reveals a dangerous combination of naivete and unfamiliarity with the issue.

Speaking of naivete, MIlne apparently believes that a different “tone” is all we need to make Vermont a growing, prosperous economic miracle. He’s harshly critical of Shumlin’s economic record, but when asked how he’d do things differently, this is what he comes up with:

Our primary, um, fix that we’re going to offer to Vermont is, uh, a much better tone and friendly tone towards business, and then some specific plans about how to attract business and keep business in Vermont.

His “primary fix” is a “better tone.” He’s vaguely promising “some specific plans” somewhere down the road, but his #1 solution to our economic troubles is a “better tone.”

I dunno. To me, and to many liberals and progressives, Governor Shumlin is awfully solicitous of the business community. He seeks their input, he listens to them, someties he shapes his policies to accommodate their concerns… and he’s certainly attracted more than a Democrat’s usual share of donations from Vermont businesspeople. Indeed, perhaps the biggest reason for the Republicans’ financial woes is that Shumlin has co-opted many of their usual big-money donors. If Shumlin is such a negative for business, why aren’t businesspeople trying harder to unseat him?

Besides, “tone” by itself is nothing. The “tone” makes a difference only as it affects your policies — say, kneecapping Act 250 or otherwise easing regulatory processes. For Milne to call for a new “tone” as the “primary fix” strikes me as disingenuous. He’s presenting himself as a moderate, so the last thing he wants to do is offer detailed pro-business policies. That’d give away the game. Instead, he talks of “tone,” and sounds a bit like a fool in doing so.