SOUTH NEWFANE-Peter Barus’s report wasn’t unexpected, but it detailed the worst possible outcome for the Vermont Yankee site.
It seems some smooth gents from Texas or somewhere arrived in Vernon to meet up with townsfolk to propose bringing new jobs and wealth to the town, thereby helping to deal with growing unemployment. That sounds sooo good.
Turns out these gents hold leases for the decommissioned and defunct nuclear power plant acreage downriver from Brattleboro and upriver from many happy fish and other beings who live along the Massachusetts and Connecticut riverbanks. Yet the health of us living in and near the river is of minor consequence to these gents and hardly worth discussing. They’ve come to feel out the town’s reactions to three industrial choices they’ve already planned for the site.
Those three choices are: 1) a power battery storage facility, 2) a large data center, needing lots of cooling town water, and 3) or a spanking new, state-of-the art nuclear power station producing maga — oops, mega — amounts of energy for the whole state and beyond.
Any subsequent spent fuel rods, container-cask contamination, and the like won’t have to be dealt with going forward for, like, four billion years when our descendants can deal with it, if any are around.
But hasn’t Vermont spent 30-plus years battling corporations to rid ourselves of the last nuke plant? Oh, well — no matter. It is doubtful that any of these wonderful new industrial suggestions would bring jobs other than occasional Texas techies and investment overseers from Wall Street to check on operations.
An old Army buddy from East Texas once told me that if you ever see smiling Texans show up in nice new five-gallon hats, Ralph Lauren suits, tooled-leather cowboy boots, and the like, you’d better slam your doors, duck, and run. And if trapped, tell them whatever it is they’ve come for is already spoken for, and nobody knows nothing. Then go get the fastest talking lawyer around.
I don’t live in Vernon, but I doubt these proposals are a good fit for anywhere in Vermont, or elsewhere.
Fred Lawrence
South Newfane
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