VIDEO: Mines, drones, nukes, jobs, bugs and conspiracies

Charlestown Tapas

By Will Collette

Public Radio takes on Copar-Armetta

(Photo by Will Collette)

I’m hoping the recent two-part radio series on our local NPR station was a boost to the morale of the Bradford and Charlestown victims of the infamous Copar-Armetta granite quarry on the Charlestown line in Bradford. 

Rhode Island Public Radio did a detailed report on the saga of that quarry going back to its early history as an abandoned quarry and taking you all the way through its emergence of one of the area’s most obnoxious environmental problems. Then they took a look at the broader issues involving “extractive industries” that include quarries, sand pits and gravel banks.

Click here for the first segment and here for the second.

While the first segment does a very good job at capturing the injustices done to the neighbors of Copar-Armetta, the second segment was a frustrating read for its ambivalent treatment of other area operations who have also drawn major safety violations and neighbor complaints. The second segment is also pretty one-sided on the ineffective actions of Charlestown’s Town Council which has, to date, come up with more excuses for doing nothing than anything useful. Click here and here for more detail.

No drones

Checking on a reader inquiry about a new post on the Charlestown Police Department’s Facebook page, I e-mailed CPD Chief Jeffrey Allen to find out if Charlestown had acquired a drone. 

There’s a YouTube video on the CPD Facebook page titled “Cool video of the Charlestown Breachway & camping area” with the caption reading “Saturday afternoon at Charlestown RI Breachway. Having fun with the drone.”

So I asked Chief Allen if CPD had acquired a drone. I got a quick reply from Chief Allen – “Absolutely not.  Facebook needs to be revisited if that is on it.  I will take a look.”

Here’s the video (one of several like it you can find on YouTube). 

The FAA is supposed to come out with broad, new rules very soon on the non-military use of drones in the US. Drones have actually been in use in the US for a long time. Generations of kids (and adults) have flown low-level model aircraft, though none were equipped with Hellfire missiles. 

Beloved RI cartoonist Don Bosquet and his son run a drone photography business that has taken some spectacular drone footage along the coast.

An early drone. Seriously. They really ARE NOT a new technology.

In earlier articles, I’ve noted my ambivalence about use of drones by local government. I think they’d be great for finding lost kids, scoping out fires in the woods, watching for sharks off the beach and even helping police deal with the rare barricade situation. I’d love to see drones used for environmental enforcement (take that, Copar). But of course there needs to be a clear set of rules that protect civil liberties. Rep. Teresa Tanzi introduced the first legislation to do that last year, but it didn't get out of committee.

New problems at Millstone Nuclear

You can see the discharge plume near the center of this Google Earth
screenshot. 2.2 BILLION gallons every day is drawn in then discharged.

Our local nuclear power plant, the Millstone Nuclear Power Plant just outside New London, about 20 miles to the west of Charlestown, can’t seem to stay out of trouble.

The latest flap is over Millstone’s “thermal plume.” Each and every day, Millstone draws over 2 billion gallons of ocean water to cool its two operating reactors and its radioactive waste cooling pits. Each and every day, it discharges 2.2 billion gallons of sea water that is heated to 20-30 degrees warmer than normal back into the ocean.

While this artificial warm current in Long Island Sound attracts flounder and striped bass, it disrupts the ecology of Niantic Bay which feeds into Long Island Sound in ways that are little understood. 

Even though Millstone first powered up 44 years ago in 1970, regulators don’t have the data to know how much impact that enormous amount of heated water is having on local waters.

Perhaps one reason why Millstone and the regulators don’t collect the data is that bad numbers could mean big bucks – if Millstone’s “thermal plume” is harming the environment, Millstone may have to construct cooling towers of the type you see at lots of power plants (e.g. Brayton Point). Retrofitting Millstone with cooling towers would cost an estimated $2.6 billion. That’s a little more than $1 per gallon for the heated water it discharges every day.

Some months ago, I reported on Millstone’s decision to build its emergency response center up in Norwich, CT, located where it would be protected by distance and wind direction from radiation is a major accident were to occur at the plant. Unfortunately, Charlestown is downwind and well within the 50-mile major accident danger zone.

Anyway, Millstone’s Virginia-based owner, Dominion Resources, now wants permission from Norwich to use the parking lot for city-owned Dodd Stadium for overflow parking when it conducts drills, or in the awful event that a major accident causes the emergency response center to go into emergency mode. They have 75 spaces at the emergency center site, but would need 200 more spaces if the balloon goes up.

Dodd Stadium. The team is called the Tigers. I checked their website (where I got this photo) to find out what the hell that grotesque green thing is. Couldn't find out. Any guesses, anyone?

Plus, they’ll need more space to stage equipment used to deal with an emergency and helicopter landing-takeoff spots as well.

Dodd Stadium is used by the baseball minor league Connecticut Tigers.

Jobs

Wood River Health Services wants to hire a dental assistant. Click here for more details.

South County Community Action is looking for a heating assistance clerk. Click here for more details. They also want to hire an assistant teacher. Click here for more details.

I’m cherry-picking the recent South County listings from the much more voluminous list of non-profit jobs you can find on Rhode Island Community Jobs, a service of Brown University’s Swearer Center. To get their daily e-mail that lists all the most recent job openings, click here.

No mosquito-borne diseases

The pattern continues that DEM and the Health Department are finding very little in the way of mosquito-borne diseases that threaten humans. No West Nile Virus or Eastern Equine Encephalitis (EEE) in the latest samples.

Unlike last year’s terrible summer season, only two instances of infected mosquitos were found this year – both for West Nile and both just north of Charlestown in Great Swamp. No EEE-tainted samples were found anywhere in Rhode Island this year and the season is just about over.

Just in time for flu season (get your damned shots!), with enterovirus and maybe even some Ebola for spice.

“Agenda 21” still on the march

The RI Department of Administration’s Statewide Planning unit is beginning to wrap up the public input phase of its development of “RhodeMap RI,” a long-term comprehensive plan for the state’s economy over the next 20 years.

The CCA Party, and in particular lead paranoid Town Council member George Tremblay, have been sounding the alarm about RhodeMap RI for months using descriptions remarkably like those used by the tinfoil hat right-wingers for the United Nation’s “Agenda 21” guidelines for sustainable development.

To see for yourself what horrific ideas have come up so far, click here. There will be two hearings on the draft plan: Oct. 27 at 6 p.m. in conference room A, second floor, in the Department of Administration’s building, One Capitol Hill, and Oct. 28 at 6 p.m. at North Kingstown Senior Center, 44 Beach St., North Kingstown.