Opinion/Your Turn: Call for officials to halt Holtec evaporation of radioactive water

The hubris of Holtec is endless. As a limited liability company from New Jersey, Holtec came to Plymouth promising to be a ‘good neighbor’ and work with our community with ‘openness and transparency’ after purchasing the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station for decommissioning in 2019.

Holtec has not been a good neighbor at all. To save money, Holtec planned to dump over a million gallons of radioactive and chemically contaminated industrial wastewater into Cape Cod Bay rather than choose an environmentally safe method of management.

In late 2022, the Environmental Protection Agency informed Holtec the current National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit (NPDES) prohibits dumping its industrial wastewater and requires a new permit to discharge or Holtec officials could face jail time. With that threat, in March 2023, Holtec turned to forced evaporation of the wastewater using immersion heaters under the guise of heating ambient air for “worker comfort.” With that procedure Holtec is discharging radioactive airborne effluent, dosing the public and the bay with impunity.

Even Holtec admits evaporation is a hazardous action. “Evaporation releases higher levels of radioactive materials due to the concentration and lack of dilution when water becomes a gas,” cited Holtec spokesperson John Delmar after Holtec dumped into Barnegat Bay in New Jersey without residents' knowledge.

In the meantime, Holtec is gaming the system and has submitted an amendment for the dumping permit STILL under review by the EPA and Mass. Department of Environmental Protection, which requires a separate Surface Water Discharge permit. Holtec needs both permits. While the MassDEP has given a "tentative denial" of its permit last August, the final decision is still in question.

Here in Massachusetts, the tentative denial cites the Ocean Sanctuaries Act, which clearly identifies discharging both liquid and gaseous materials in protected areas as prohibited. The Act defines waste to include “any unwanted, discarded, or environmentally harmful solid, liquid, or gaseous materials resulting from commercial, municipal, domestic or industrial activities…” In other words, such discharges would be illegal.

In addition, the MA-Holtec Settlement Agreement requires Holtec to abide by state laws and regulations; “Holtec shall comply with all applicable environmental and human health based standards and regulations of the Commonwealth.”

The commonwealth has the authority to halt Holtec. When Maura Healey was on the campaign trail in 2022, she pledged, “We’ve come a long way on this issue, and I’ll be damn sure, in whatever capacity I serve, that we’re not going to have radioactive waste dumped down here.” She continued, “I will continue to hold Holtec accountable and make them live up to the conditions of the agreement.”

We need our governor to step up today to protect our communities and Cape Cod Bay. Contact Gov. Healey and demand state laws are enforced that prohibit Holtec from discharging and evaporating Pilgrim’s radioactive and chemically contaminated industrial wastewater into our environment and immediately deny the state Surface Water Discharge Permit.

Diane Turco of Harwich is a director of of Cape Downwinders and a member of the coalition Save Our Bay MA .

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This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Opinion/Your Turn: Call for officials to halt Holtec evaporation of radioactive water