MassDEP issues final determination to deny permit to dump radioactive water into Cape Cod Bay
Save Our Bay MA had an exciting victory.
On July 18, 2024 the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection released a final determination to stop radioactively and chemically contaminated industrial wastewater from being dumped into Cape Cod Bay.
I’m passing on a message from Ben Cronin, a member of Save Our Bay MA, below.
Thank you to everyone who has supported this effort.
Plymouth County Observer – MassDEP Issues Final Determination Denying Holtec’s Application To Modify Its Permit:
Discharge of Radioactive and Chemically Contaminated Wastewater Illegal Under Mass. Ocean Sanctuaries Act
By Ben Cronin
(Boston) – The Mass. Dept. of Environmental Protection has issued a final determination denying Holtec’s application to modify its permit to allow the company to discharge its radioactively- and chemically-contaminated industrial wastewater into Cape Cod Bay. As in its tentative determination last July, MassDEP found that the proposed discharge violates the Massachusetts Ocean Sanctuaries Act (M.G.L. c. 132A Secs. 12A-16K and Sec. 18), which prohibits the discharge of industrial waste into protected ocean sanctuaries, including Duxbury, Kingston, Plymouth, and Cape Cod Bays.
This is a major victory — for our Towns, our Commonwealth, our oceans, and for the broad and diverse alliance that arose in their defense: the grassroots Save Our Bay coalition [full disclosure: I am a member], our elected officials from our Town, State, and Federal Governments, and above all, for our citizens across the region who have exercised their constitutional “right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties … in fine, of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness.” (Mass. Declaration of Rights, Art. I)
What this victory shows is democracy and the law working as they ought to. Holtec is certainly likely to appeal, and the situation bears close watching; but for now, this is very good news, and I want to both notify all you, and to express my sincere and profound gratitude for your attention to, and support on, this issue. Democracy and the common law system are not without flaws, but as this matter demonstrates, they remain the most powerful, effective, and just means of “obtaining our safety and happiness.”
In the meantime, we cannot afford to rest on our laurels, but rather must turn to a related issue — the fact that forced evaporation, by which Holtec is presently getting rid of its radioactively and chemically contaminated wastewater at Pilgrim, is also illegal under the Ocean Sanctuaries Act and associated regulations.
We still, therefore, have work to do, to ensure that Holtec follows the law, and to see that the wastewater — whether in liquid or in gaseous form — does not end up in Cape Cod Bay.
