North Atlantic Right Whales (NOAA photo)

For many decades, the North Atlantic right whale was a conservation success story. After being hunted to near extinction, a series of protective actions that began in the 1930s, and accelerated in the 1960s, helped the population begin to rebound.

But in 2010, something changed. Since then, the number of North Atlantic right whales has started to decrease again. Last year was particularly bad; 17 bloated carcasses washed up on beaches along the East Coast, many of which were marred by scars from boat strikes and fishing gear.

With approximately 450 of these whales left, every death is a big deal. In fact, experts predict if the current trend holds, the species, which plays an important role in the marine ecosystem, will be extinct by 2040.

Yet, while much attention has been paid to mortalities, far less attention has been paid to what some biologists say is the whale’s real long-term problem: plummeting birth rates… Continue reading at WBUR.org 

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With controversial reactor down since storms, tensions run high in Plymouth

Miriam Wasser

As the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth remained offline for the 22nd consecutive day, supporters and opponents of the plant gathered about six miles away in the dimly lit ballroom of Hotel 1620 this week for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s annual assessment meeting. The federal agency often hosts an annual meeting in communities with nuclear reactors in order to brief the public about the status of the plant and talk about any oversight or safety issues.

Like in years past, those for and against the plant came with brightly colored signs and prepared speeches, and eyed each other cautiously from different sides of the room.

The Pilgrim plant has been plagued by mechanical and operational problems since it began producing power in 1972, and many in the public remain bitterly divided about whether the plant, which is slated to permanently shut down in 2019, poses a significant threat to public safety.

This year’s meeting was particularly fraught because a series of strong winter storms forced the plant to shut down—or scram—twice in the last three months. Pilgrim remains offline as plant workers attempt to fix a transformer located between the electrical switchyard and the reactor.

Though the bulk of the 3.5-hour meeting was public comments—69 people signed up to speak—the night began with short presentations from the NRC and Pilgrim’s owner-operator, Entergy Corporation.

“Pilgrim operated safely in 2017,” said David Lew, acting administrator of NRC Region 1, as many of those in the audience holding neon green “Shut Pilgrim Now” signs groaned.

“The NRC noted some improvements in performance, but sustainably remains to be determined,” he continued. More groans. “Overall performance warrants continued placement in Column 4.” (The NRC rates reactors annually on a scale of 1-5. Column 1 is the best and Column 5 means a mandated federal shutdown. Pilgrim has been in Column 4 since 2015.)

In other words, Lew said, the plant was getting better, but an upgrade would be contingent upon meeting and sustaining certain safety benchmarks. …Continue reading in DigBoston.

50 Years of Anti-Nuclear Mass: An Oral History

On a sunny morning last September, a small group of men and women met in the Christmas Tree Shops parking lot by the Sagamore Bridge. It was Labor Day, the unofficial end of summer, and the line of cars heading over the bridge out of Cape Cod was steadily growing as the minutes went by.

Two women from Cape Downwinders, the local anti-nuclear group that organized the day’s rally, began to unpack signs and banners from a car. They carried them over to the metal guardrail that separates the parking lot from Route 6. Nearby, Diane Turco, director of Cape Downwinders, struggled with a white pop-up tent. As she fought against the wind to tape the banners to the lightweight metal frame, the two other women, Mary Conathan and Susan Carpenter, put down their banners on the grass and came to help her.

All three wore neon green T-shirts that read “Shut Down Pilgrim” and laughed as they tried to keep the tent from blowing away. After finally getting it strapped to the guardrail with bungee cords, they walked back to the car to get the rest of their signs and greet the latest arrivals.

In all, about a dozen people came to the rally — a smaller crowd than the organizers had hoped for — and they spread out along the road with their banners and signs. Cars began honking almost immediately. Occasionally, someone rolled down a window and cheered.

“I am amazed now how many people are paying attention,” Carpenter said. Up until a few years ago, she explained, a lot of people in the area supported the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station. “People were saying that we need the power and it keeps our rates down. Now people thank us.”

For those on the Cape, the Pilgrim question is hard to ignore — and not only because of regular public demonstrations like the annual Labor Day and Memorial Day rallies at the bridge. Massachusetts’ sole nuclear power plant has been in the news for several problems, including during the most recent winter storms.

In 2015, after a series of unplanned shutdowns, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission downgraded the Plymouth plant’s safety rating and deemed it one of the three worst-performing reactors in the country. Shortly thereafter, Pilgrim’s owner-operator, Louisiana-based Entergy Corporation, announced that it would close the plant by June 2019.

For those at the bridge, the upcoming closure, while exciting, also presents a whole new host of safety concerns.

“What happens at Pilgrim could set precedent for the country, and we’re pushing for Pilgrim to be the poster child for public safety,” Turco said. “Unfortunately, we have a lot more work to do. We hope that we’ve provided a foundation for activism in our community, but this is going to be an ongoing issue.”

With the plant about to enter its final year of operation, and anti-Pilgrim activists planning the next stages of their campaign, it seemed a fitting time to look back at the 50-year fight against one of the country’s most problematic nuclear power plants.

Miriam Wasser

What follows is an oral history of the anti-Pilgrim movement, patched together from extensive interviews conducted with more than 20 experts and activists, many of whom have spent countless hours litigating in court, writing petitions, attending demonstrations, and even sitting in jail cells. The message, tactics, politics, and players have changed over the past half-century, but the underlying effort — to stand up for the health and safety of their families and neighbors — has been unrelenting.

READ THE INTRODUCTION AND PART I…

READ PART II…

READ PART III AND THE EPILOGUE…

CHECK OUT THE EXTRAS…

FROM THE EDITOR’S NOTE:

When we first asked Miriam Wasser to consider documenting stories about nuclear protests for our BINJ oral history series, several things were different than they are today. For one, it was before an inspector from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) accidentally forwarded a troubling report about the Plymouth plant to longtime crusader Diane Turco, executive director of the anti-Pilgrim group Cape Downwinders; among other damning statements, the email, sent on Dec 6, 2016, noted, “The plant seems overwhelmed by just trying to run the station,” and, “It appears that many staff across the site may not have the standards to know what ‘good’ actually is.” In the time since, as Miriam has spent innumerable hours researching old documents and interviewing people who have been vocally concerned about such risks for generations, its track record of safety problems has continued. During this year’s early January “bomb cyclone” that flooded much of coastal Massachusetts, the plant was forced to shut down after losing one of two external power sources.

Though the NRC appears to be an even bigger joke under President Donald Trump than it was under his negligent predecessors, the intention of this work is not to frighten readers. Rather it is to further alert the public to the bankrupt nature of what passes for real oversight in the United States, even when the lives of millions are potentially in danger. On the strength of Miriam’s hard work and expertise, and of participants who lent their memories and photos to the effort, we hope this time capsule preserves the people’s history and informs this and other movements moving forward. As is explained in detail in this volume, if not for the actions of a dedicated core activist crew on the Cape over a 50-year span, there could be two or three reactors on the bay that may have operated long after the planned closing for next year.

On that note… Pilgrim may be slated to shut down in 2019, but as the struggle chugs along for those who will still live in close proximity to possible contamination from its remnants, there’s no doubt that the forces who have stood up for their health and safety for the past half-century will keep fighting. This is their story.

Chris Faraone, BINJ Editorial Director

A smaller but determined crowd attends the 2018 Boston-Cambridge Women’s March

Miriam Wasser

If the theme behind last year’s Boston Women’s March was one of symbolic defiance and solidarity, this year’s message focused on resolve, resilience, and the tactical groundwork of electoral politics.

Though smaller than the city’s 2017 gathering, which drew about 175,000 people, the estimated 10,000 people who showed up on Cambridge Common on Saturday displayed no shortage of enthusiasm or energy. Long before the event began, crowds of pink pussy-hat wearing women, men, and children poured out of the Harvard Square subway stop and into the soggy and muddy park.

They posed for photographs and selfies, signed petitions, and complemented each other’s posters. (Like last year, the signs were great: DUST SETTLES, GIRLS DON’T; WE ARE THE GRANDDAUGHTERS OF THE WITCHES WHO DIDN’T BURN; WATCH OUT, I CAN VOTE IN SIX YEARS; and, a crowd favorite, 8-year-old Tallula Sullivan’s homemade TRUMP IS A STUPID BUTTHEAD.Prior to the official start of the rally, a choir and a marching band entertained the crowd—there was a giant pink pussy hat on the tuba—while stirring people could be overheard lamenting President Donald Trump’s behavior. They talked about programs like Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), both of which are front and center in the heated debate over the federal government shutdown. They spoke about the importance of winning Democratic majorities in the US Senate and Congress in November, and about the need to address major systemic issues like race, sex, and gender discrimination. …Continue reading in DigBoston

Experts Say The Risk of Uranium Mining Near the Grand Canyon Is Not Worth The Reward

Miriam Wasser

If you didn’t know what you were looking for, you’d probably never come across Canyon Mine, an active uranium mine near the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. To get there, you turn off Highway 64, about 11 miles before the South Ranger Station entrance, and follow Forest Service Road 305 through a forest of ponderosa pine, pinyon, and juniper trees.

After five miles, the bumpy unpaved road ends at a metal fence with a few security cameras and “no trespassing” signs mounted on it. Canyon Mine, which is owned and operated by Energy Fuels Resources, isn’t particularly impressive from the outside. Aside from the tall green headframe, there’s a squat building, a few trucks, some rock piles, and a large black plastic-lined storage pool filled with water.

Unlike the big, hellish-looking open pit coal mines of Appalachia, uranium mines tend to leave a much smaller physical imprint on the surface of the earth. In fact, there’s a good chance that if you were visiting the Grand Canyon during the mine’s extraction phase, which is expected to start in the next few years, you’d never know anything was happening.

But Canyon Mine is just one mine. What if there were hundreds of them in the area? …Continue Reading in the Phoenix New Times

Hundreds gather in Boston to demand investigation into Trump-Russia ties

Photo by Miriam Wasser

Against the backdrop of the State House dome and a giant American flag, at least 200 people gathered by the 54th Regiment Memorial in Boston Common Sunday afternoon to demand an independent and thorough investigation into any collusion between President Donald Trump and Russia.

The event was billed “An Emergency Rally to Stand for Democracy,” and many in attendance wore their pink knitted pussy hats from last month’s Women’s March and carried signs or banners.

“If there is even the smallest possibility that Trump conspired with Russians, then an investigation must occur because there has never been a greater threat to democratic principles,” Olivia Hartranft, one of the event organizers, told the crowd.

Hartranft, like every speaker of the day, also invoked the now-famous words of former US Senator Howard Henry Baker Jr., one of the leaders on the Senate committee investigating President Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal. “What did the president know and when did he know it?”

“We don’t know exactly how, but we know [Trump] is compromised by foreign nations,” said Bob Massie of the Sustainable Solutions Lab at UMASS Boston. In a short speech that sought to place the day’s gathering in a historical context of resistance and activism, Massie, who is considering a 2018 run for governor, also talked about the Revolutionary War and the Founding Fathers, noting, “They built a Constitution and Bill of Rights that was built on a set of principles that are now in danger. Can our nation continue to endure?” …Continue Reading in DigBoston

At Heated Public Meeting, Nuclear Regulators Infuriate Massachusetts Activists With Announcement That Pilgrim Power Plant Will Stay Open

Photo by Miriam Wasser

About 300 residents of Cape Cod and the South Shore packed into the ballroom of Hotel 1620 in Plymouth last Tuesday, hoping to finally get some answers from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) about the future of the beleaguered operation in their backyard, Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station.

Though a few dozen people wearing green “I support Pilgrim” pins sat quietly in the back of the room, most in attendance were

longtime anti-nuclear activists and fierce critics of the plant, who at times broke out into chants of “Shut it down! Shut it down!”

“It is critical that the NRC stop pussy-footing around,” Pine DuBois, an organizer with the nonprofit Jones River Watershed Association, told the four-person NRC panel. “You are putting our lives and our environment at risk. We know we’re not safe … and we insist you close this down.”

DuBois’ fear is understandable, given that a serious accident at the plant could threaten the health and safety of an estimated five million people living in the 50-mile “emergency planning zone” around Plymouth—an area that includes Boston and much of Rhode Island.

The meeting lasted about three hours, during which time NRC officials made speeches, answered questions about safety, and listened to a lot of public testimony about the state and status of the plant.

Though many speeches were fiery and riled up the crowd, the night ended on a disappointing note for most in attendance, as the NRC gave no indication that it plans to close Pilgrim for safety violations.

“Allowing Pilgrim to limp along doesn’t demonstrate that the NRC is acting in the public’s best interest,” one speaker said, spurring major applause.

The situation at Pilgrim is, to say the least, complex. The 44-year old plant is technically licensed to operate until 2032 but is expected to close in 2019 because its owner, the Louisiana-based utility company Entergy, isn’t making a profit. (All around the country, cheap natural gas prices have caused a handful of nuclear power plants to shutter in the last few years.)

While 2019 is only a few years away, many of those living in the shadow of the plant believe it isn’t worth the risk to keep it open for that long. In many ways, their concerns stem from the fact that the plant has had multiple safety issues in the last four years and is officially classified as one of the three worst plants in the country by the NRC. …Continue Reading in DigBoston

Seven Ways the Trump Administration Could Destroy Social Welfare in Arizona

Illustration by Vlad Alvarez

Every day seems to bring another headline about a new nominee from President-elect Donald Trump, and with it, a renewed sense of horror among his critics — a climate-change denier at the Environmental Protection Agency; a retired neurosurgeon with no experience in government or management at Housing and Urban Development; the leader of a fast-food chain who doesn’t believe in minimum wage or workers’ rights at the Department of Labor; the former editor of the alt-right publication Breitbart as chief strategist.

The list goes on.

As Trump has been announcing his cabinet picks, New Times has been interviewing more than two dozen local political leaders and experts from a variety of fields to see what impact they believe the Trump administration will have on social welfare in Arizona.

Health care, education programs, affordable housing, behavioral health and substance abuse programs, services for people with disabilities, protection for the environment — all are funded heavily by federal dollars in a state the U.S. Census Bureau says has an above-average poverty rate, and a governor and legislature not much interested in helping children and those in need.

“If we do what we’ve historically done, we’ll … essentially remove the safety-net programs [for] our vulnerable citizens,” says Eric Meyer, outgoing minority whip for the Arizona House of Representatives.

The wealthiest among us will get tax cuts, if the pattern set by Governor Doug Ducey and the Republican leaders in the Arizona legislature continues.

“They’ve voted over and over again to cut funding for education and other services,” Meyer says, “and in the same stroke of a pen, give tax cuts to corporations or the wealthy.”

Under Trump, there will be social welfare crises throughout the country, but they’re going to be worse in Arizona, says U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), because if the federal government slashes funding, our leaders won’t pick up the slack like leaders in other states might.

“We have a very soulless state government, and they’re just itching to kick people off Medicaid and get rid of the Affordable Care Act. We are definitely going to feel it more than other states are,” he says.

Arizona’s political leadership has long championed a hard-right, fiscally conservative agenda, says local political consultant Bob Grossfeld. In the past, “the political support hasn’t been there or there’s been enough of an opposition to stop them. That’s all going to disappear now; that’s what’s going to make this different,” he says. (Continue reading at the Phoenix New Times.)

The Millennial’s Dilemma: A Young Writer’s Search for Our Nuclear Future in Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Phoenix

Illustration by Randy Pollak

After a cold and drizzly morning this past May, the sun is finally out in the Exclusion Zone, the heavily guarded area around the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in northern Ukraine.

The circular-shaped zone — which has a radius of 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) — is located about 60 miles north of Kiev, the capital city of Ukraine, and about nine miles south of the border with Belarus. It’s full of tall pine trees and big, open, green fields where wild horses and deer graze. The area is so quiet, so deserted, and so overgrown that it’s hard to imagine it was once home to more than 130,000 people.

It took the Soviets five years to build Chernobyl, and the plant began producing power in 1977. Unlike those constructing power plants in the U.S. and western Europe, though, they didn’t build strong concrete and steel containment buildings around their nuclear reactors. So when a safety test went awry on April 26, 1986, and caused a big explosion inside Reactor No. 4, huge amounts of radiation were released into the atmosphere.

Thirty years later, the area is still officially uninhabitable. Most spots inside the 30-kilometer zone aren’t particularly radioactive, but still, anyone who works there — from the guides to the thousands of nuclear scientists, construction workers, cooks and hotel workers, and military security guards — can only spend a certain number of consecutive days inside the zone and must consent to regular medical examinations. Any tourist wishing to visit the area must be part of a government-approved group.

The Exclusion Zone is eerie and decaying, a hauntingly beautiful time capsule. Nine other tour participants and I walk over broken glass, scattered papers, and things I assume were once clothes or blankets. I explore rooms filled with rusty, antiquated medical equipment in an abandoned hospital, and dozens of classrooms filled with desks — sometimes still lined up in rows and piled high with paperback books. There are children’s drawings and alphabet flashcards all over the desks and floors in one of the classrooms, and a giant pile of child-sized gas masks in the corner of another.

In some buildings, we have to creep along the edges of a room because parts of the floor are rotted out. We walk in a zigzag pattern to avoid the leaking ceilings and puddles in long, windowless hallways…

I assume that given the chance to go anywhere, most people wouldn’t choose to visit the site of the world’s largest nuclear disaster. But I did.

I wanted to walk around the overgrown and crumbling central squares of abandoned cities and villages, and see what a house looks like after a frightened family packs only a small bag of belongings and never returns. I wanted to see Chernobyl, 30 years later.

The week before, I had visited Fukushima Prefecture in Japan, home of the second largest nuclear disaster in history, the 2011 triple meltdown at the Fukushima-Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (prefectures are the Japanese version of states).

In both cases, I wanted to know how a country recovers from a nuclear accident and how its citizens feel about it, because in the last year, I’ve become obsessed with nuclear power and how I should feel about it.

This all began when I moved to Arizona from the East Coast two years ago and realized that I suddenly was living in the fallout zone of the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, the country’s largest nuclear power plant. (Continue reading at the Phoenix New Times.)

A Year After Millions of Gallons of Toxic Water Spilled Into the Animas River, Little Has Changed

When Duane “Chili” Yazzie learned that a massive load of bright-yellow toxic mining waste was flowing down the Animas River toward his small farming community in Shiprock, New Mexico, he rushed home and turned on every sprinkler and hose he had.

With the plume of waste about 100 miles upstream from his farm, he figured he had a day or two before it affected his irrigation water. And in the meantime, his crops needed all the clean water he could get.

Shiprock is a sprawling but sparse town of about 9,000 people in the rugged, high-altitude desert of northwest New Mexico. Positioned about halfway between the Arizona border and the city of Farmington, the town is perhaps most notable for the 1,500-foot jagged or “winged” rock piercing through the otherwise-flat ground — early European settlers called the area Shiprock because they thought the formation looked like a large sailboat with multiple masts and sails.

Many in Shiprock rely on farming to make a living or to feed their families, so when officials said they’d be turning off the irrigation water for an undetermined amount of time, a sudden and collective sense of fear overtook the room.

All evening long, as Yazzie allowed the irrigation water to flow into his 100-acre farm, every major news outlet in the country was broadcasting shocking images of the Animas River. The waste, which was reportedly spilling out of the mine at a rate of 600 gallons per minute, was yellow because of the sulfuric acid and heavy metals it contained — lead, arsenic, cadmium, copper, aluminum, zinc, and manganese, among others.

In total, about 880,000 pounds of heavy metals spilled into the river, and some tests showed lead levels in the water were 12,000 times higher than normal.

At 66, Yazzie has black hair streaked with silver that he usually wears pulled back in a braid. He favors bright shirts and beaded jewelry, a color palette that contrasts sharply with his thick, black eyebrows and the deep laugh lines around his mouth. He speaks slowly, deliberately, and often squints or closes his eyes as if he’s trying to formulate just the right sentence in his head before he says it.

“Yellow River,” he calls it. “The day the river turned yellow…” (Continue reading at the Phoenix New Times.)