There's Indian Point, and Counterpoints

Richard L. Harbus for The New York Times

The cooling towers at the Indian Point nuclear power plant on the Hudson River in Westchester County remind some nearby residents of possible safety hazards.

By LYDIA POLGREEN

f there was ever a moment when it seemed possible to force the closing of the Indian Point nuclear power plant, it was after two planes flew into the World Trade Center.

The attack on New York City on Sept. 11, 2001, transformed a movement once dominated by a small band of antinuclear activists and environmentalists into the cause of suburban soccer moms and Little League dads. Alarmed that one of the planes carrying the hijackers had flown near Indian Point, about 35 miles north of Midtown Manhattan, and worried about how their families would get out of their densely populated suburban communities should disaster strike, many slapped "Close Indian Point" bumper stickers on their minivans and sport utility vehicles.

Yet nearly two years after the terrorist attack, the decades-old struggle to close Indian Point seems no nearer to its goal. The best evidence of this fact came last week, when the Federal Emergency Management Agency slammed shut the only window local communities had into the odd regulatory world that governs nuclear plants, endorsing an emergency evacuation plan that local and state officials said was seriously flawed.

For months, the plan was the focus of intense lobbying and activism, with many local officials refusing to certify it as an adequate blueprint for the complex task of getting the 300,000 people who live within 10 miles of the plant to safety in the event of an accident or terrorist attack.

But the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved the plan within hours of the emergency management agency's finding. The move, which was met with near-universal dismay by many of those who live near the plant, is a fundamental shift in the battle over Indian Point.

"The policy questions surrounding this issue are now closed," said Richard Brodsky, a state assemblyman from Westchester County who wants the plant shut down. "We are now essentially in a political and a legal struggle. We can either go to the courts or change the politics of the situation. In my opinion, we need to do both."

Refusing to concede the regulatory commission's decision to approve the evacuation plan as a defeat, those who would close the plant argue that the emergency management agency's actions will energize the movement and open new legal and political avenues toward shutting the plant.

The emergency plan does not require Congressional approval. But those who want the plant to close say they plan to put more pressure on their representatives in Congress and on Gov. George E. Pataki to push FEMA and the regulatory commission to reconsider their decisions. They also plan to consider filing lawsuits to challenge the federal agencies in court.

"We never expected that this would be easy," said Alex Matthiessen, director of Riverkeeper, an environmental group at the center of the campaign to shut down the plant. "This is not a setback."

Much of the political effort will center on persuading the federal agencies to explain their decisions. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote last week to FEMA's director, Michael D. Brown, requesting documentation used in making the decision to approve the plan.

She also asked for the agency's support for Senate hearings about the plan, and asked for a full-scale planning exercise within six months, rather than in June 2004, to be evaluated by independent observers.

Representative Sue Kelly, whose Congressional district includes Indian Point and thousands of people who live near it, is calling for hearings to find out why the emergency management agency approved the plan despite the reservations of local officials and a report by James Lee Witt, the agency's former director and now a private consultant, who studied the plan for Mr. Pataki and issued a report calling it inadequate.

"If FEMA won't come in willingly" to answer questions about the decision, Ms. Kelly said, "I am going to ask that we subpoena them and put them under oath and make them testify."

Mr. Pataki said on Friday that he had not yet decided whether the plant should remain open, though he criticized the emergency plan as flawed. He has said he will press FEMA and the regulatory commission to explain why they approved the plan despite the problems identified in the Witt report.

"In my mind there is one issue and that is safety," Mr. Pataki told reporters last week. "Certain safety concerns have been raised by me, they've been raised by James Lee Witt, and raised by others. In their response, the N.R.C. in my view did not address those safety concerns; they just came to a conclusion. We're going to continue to push for them to answer why they came to that conclusion to see whether or not they have in fact answered the safety questions. I have not seen those questions answered yet."

But the company that runs the plant, Entergy, sees the regulatory commission's decision as a near-total victory in a battle that seemed to gain serious ground over the past year as more elected officials began criticizing the plant and agitating for its closing.

"If you look back at the timeline, they have really accomplished nothing," said Larry Gottlieb, a spokesman for Entergy. "They wanted immediate closure, but they didn't get that. They wanted FEMA not to approve the plan. They didn't get that. They are losing on all fronts."

And if shutting down the plant is the goal, the movement has been unable to persuade two of the most powerful politicians in New York to join their cause ? both Mr. Pataki and Mrs. Clinton, while having expressed serious doubts about the safety of the plant and the plan to deal with a disaster there, have stopped short of calling for its closing.

Now, with the battle shifting from the bureaucratic rabbit holes of federal legislation governing nuclear plants to the more familiar territory of politics and lawsuits, the plant's opponents are reassessing their strategy and promising an all-out assault of litigation and political pressure that they hope will eventually kill the plant with a thousand cuts.

Already one lawsuit, over Indian Point's lack of a permit to use water from the Hudson River for cooling, has yielded a victory.

A judge ruled earlier this year that the State Department of Environmental Conservation must take action and issue a permit, a ruling that opponents of the plant hope will mean that Entergy has to install new cooling towers that could cost as much as $500 million.

Mr. Brodsky, who brought the suit, said he hoped the expense would convince Entergy that the plant is no longer worth running, but plant officials said they would litigate the issue, which could mean years of courtroom battles.

Mr. Gottlieb said that the plant is safe and that the company took further steps to buttress security after Sept. 11.

Advocates promise other lawsuits and more political activism.

"We are going to be continuing to attack this issue from many directions," Mr. Matthiessen said. "That is going to create a set of conditions that are going to make the possibility of forging a deal a real possibility, and one that is going to be seen as a victory for each of the stakeholders."