Stakeholders rally to block Indian Point parent company from discharge into Hudson

WHITE PLAINS − Advocates, residents and Hudson Valley lawmakers rallied Tuesday with a message for Gov. Kathy Hochul: Sign legislation to block the company that's decommissioning the Indian Point power plant from releasing radioactive discharge into the Hudson River.

About 40 to 50 people, including several state and county legislators, held signs in front of the Westchester County Center with messages such as "No nuke waste in the Hudson" and chanted, "Sign the bill! Sign the bill!"

Under the bill approved by the state legislature, violators would face up to a $37,500 fine for the first day of water discharge, $75,000 for day two, and $150,000 for each day after.

Holtec International in 2021 took over decommissioning the 60-year-old Indian Point nuclear plant, which is located along the Hudson River in northern Westchester's Buchanan village.

The bill applies to any company that would discharge nuclear materials in the river.

Elizabeth Segal, of Ossining, said in an interview at the rally that every year for the past 16 she swam across the Hudson, from Newburgh to Beacon, to raise money.

"The Hudson River is my soul, and I do not want to be unable to swim in it because I think I'll be contaminated with nuclear water," Segal said, adding the river is "a treasure to us."

Saying that Holtec plans to begin dumping up to a million gallons of radioactive wastewater in the Hudson River as early as October, Emily Skydel, organizer with Food and Water Watch, said at the rally: "So in many ways this bill is our lifeline − it would ban the dump. So Gov. Hochul, we are imploring you to use your immense power as the governor of this great state to protect us against this looming threat to our health, economy and way of life."

A Holtec spokesperson said the company disagrees with that characterization.

"This water is not, and has never been dumped, but processed and treated to ensure we meet the strict criteria for release set forth by state and federal regulations, much the same way any other industrial or municipal wastewater treatment plant discharges according to their permitted regulations," said Patrick O'Brien, the firm's director of government affairs and communications.

For instance, O'Brien said, Indian Point discharges over the last 20 years have averaged roughly one-fortieth of what the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency allows for tritium in drinking water for safe standards. "Our releases have been, and will always be, in line with allowable state and federal regulations," he added.

Holtec has said the discharge will be "well below" safe release limits the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission establishes.

Indian Point’s previous owners released radioactive water from spent fuel cooling pools into the Hudson.

But what happens at the shuttered Indian Point is drawing opposition or concern. The environmental watchdog group Riverkeeper and others have objected to the company's discharge plan. Riverkeeper has called for storing water on site for 12.5 years to give it time to reduce its radioactivity and to examine alternative disposal methods.

A petition has collected hundreds of thousands of signatures, and some 35 local governments have backed the legislation -- which cleared the recent state Assembly and Senate session in Albany -- to halt any discharges during plant decommissioning.

Hochul's spokesperson said Tuesday the governor is reviewing the legislation.

In June, the governor said she would give the bill and hundreds of others passed during the session due consideration -- "I'll be looking at all bills very closely with my team and analyzing them and doing the right thing."

Among lawmakers who spoke at the rally was State Sen. Pete Harckham, the Senate's main sponsor of the legislation, a Democrat whose 40th District takes in parts of Putnam and Westchester and Rockland's Stony Point. The Senate unanimously passed the bill.

"This is a global movement of citizens standing up and say our water bodies are not going to be used as dumping grounds for industrial waste," Harckham said. "Our water bodies, our rivers, our bays, our oceans − these are central to economic prosperity, economic vitality and economic sustainability."

Others spoke of the long years it's taken to improve the Hudson from its industrialized past of pollution.

Assembly member Dana Levenberg, an Ossining Democrat who sponsored the bill in that chamber, said, "It's taken so much to get us here. Why do we want to turn back the hands of time; why do we want to go backwards? We don't want to go backwards."

Levenberg, whose 95th District includes northern Westchester and Putnam riverfront localities, said it was learned at at a recent Decommissioning Oversight Board public input session that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission doesn't find out how much strontium is in the water until after it's been discharged.

"And that just gives us even less confidence in what the regulators are telling us," she said. "We know more than ever that we need to do the right thing, and we are not going to be dumping this radioactive water into the Hudson. We're going to stop it with all of you, working together."

Journal News/lohud photographer Tania Savayan contributed to this report.

Michael McKinney covers growth and development in Westchester County and the Lower Hudson Valley for The Journal News and the USA Today Network.

This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Holtec Indian Point radioactive Hudson River discharge plan protested