For Immediate Release:
Contacts:
HEAL’s Matt Pacenza at 801-864-0264
Uranium Watch’s Sarah Fields at 435-260-8384
Attorney John Flitton at 435-940-0842
Living River's John Weisheit at 435-260-2590
Utahns challenging the water rights of the stalled Green River nuclear reactor project announced today they have filed a legal appeal to the state’s Court of Appeals.
The plaintiffs – more than a dozen Utah environmental organizations, small business owners and concerned citizens led by HEAL Utah, Uranium Watch and Living Rivers – are challenging the November 2013 verdict from Judge George Harmond upholding the state’s decision to approve the transfer of water rights for the nuclear project.
One of the grounds of the appeal is that Blue Castle Holdings – which revealed during last fall’s District Court trial that it has raised less than $20 million of the $20 billion minimum needed to build two reactors – is engaging in speculation with the water it has leased, which Utah law doesn’t allow.
“They’ve raised less than .1 percent of the total cost of these projects,” says Park City attorney John Flitton of Flitton Babalis, who represents the plaintiffs. “What they’re trying to do is get a permit to sell to someone else, and while they wait, they’re tying up water which is increasingly important. That’s the very definition of speculation.”
In addition, the plaintiffs will argue that the Colorado River system, which encompasses the Green River, doesn’t have the 53,000 acre-feet needed to support the reactors. The multi-year drought gripping the region certainly suggests there may not be enough water for the reactors, says John Weisheit, conservation director of Living Rivers.
“The Colorado River basin is already over-allocated,” says Weisheit. “Shortages will likely begin next year for lower basin states and there is a strong chance that hydropower stops at Glen Canyon Dam before this decade is even over.”
Lastly, the appeal argues that withdrawing such a massive amount of water – 53,000 acre feet is roughly the amount a city of 200,000 uses in a year– will harm the “natural stream environment,” which Utah law forbids. The plaintiffs say that Judge Harmond ignored expert testimony that the nuclear withdrawal would decrease key fisheries areas by 50 percent. That stretch of the Green River is home to four native endangered species – the razorback sucker, humpback chub, Colorado pikeminnow, and bonytail – which depend upon key eddies, backwater channels and other features threatened by low flows.
Plaintiffs expect a hearing in front of the three-judge Court of Appeals next year.
The Green River nuclear project has made very little progress since it was first announced in 2007. In addition to failing to raise anywhere near the $100 million plus needed to file for federal permits, let alone the billions needed for construction, Blue Castle Holdings and their CEO former state Rep. Aaron Tilton have found no interest from area utilities, the only possible customers for their nuclear bid. Rocky Mountain Power, Utah’s biggest utility, has repeatedly said that it doesn’t plan to acquire costly nuclear power.
Lastly, while Blue Castle Holdings continues to claim it is preparing a permit application to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission—their next step if they want to move forward—a search of federal records shows the company has had no formal communication with the agency since 2011.
“It’s past time for Tilton to admit what we all know – his nuclear scheme is all smoke and no fire,” says Christopher Thomas, HEAL Utah’s executive director. “This project costs too much, uses too much water, and produces expensive power the state doesn’t even want to buy. We hope the Court of Appeals will see that under Utah law, it should not proceed.”
Pacenza will be available for interviews on Wednesday at the State Capitol, where the Legislature is holding its monthly interim hearings. In addition, Tilton is scheduled to address the Public Utilities and Technology Interim Committee with an update on the project in Room 215 of the Senate Building at approximately 3:30 pm.
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OpEd: Don’t buy Blue Castle’s claims of progress in building nuke plant
By Christopher Thomas of HEAL Utah
September 19, 2014
Salt Lake Tribune
Utah has many annual traditions, such as rushing up the Cottonwood Canyons on powder days or reveling in the lights of Temple Square during the Christmas season. In the past couple years, we’re developing a new one: Guffawing when the company that wants to build the Green River nuclear reactors unveils a “big” development. Their periodic news releases are little more than an empty illusion, designed to create the appearance of momentum, even as Blue Castle Holdings’ southern Utah nuclear plans remain somewhere between stalled and dead.
Unfortunately, the most recent announcement of a “deal” between Blue Castle and a major nuclear firm apparently snookered The Salt Lake Tribune, which last month ran a story headlined, “Westinghouse to Build Utah Nuclear Plant.”
Of course, we know that’s not going to happen, not after learning last fall during our trial challenging the project’s water rights that Blue Castle has raised just $500,000 from outside investors since CEO and former state Rep. Aaron Tilton formed the company in 2007. Considering the company needs about $100 million to apply to federal officials for a federal permit – not to mention the $20 billion or so they would need to build the reactors – their plan is a bit, um, underfunded.
It’s also not going to happen because utilities in the West have universally shunned new nuclear power. Rocky Mountain Power spokespeople periodically make clear that new nuclear is not in their plans. In fact, no utility in the West is planning on investing in new nuclear, leaving Blue Castle with not just no money to build their project – but no hopes of selling the expensive source of power they can’t afford to build. Yikes.
Even so, announcing a big contract with a huge nuclear company to build reactors is a big deal, right? Sure, except that’s not what actually happened. Read the press release that Westinghouse sent out and what they actually agreed to do was to “work together to develop a scope of activities for enabling the Blue Castle Project under a definitive agreement…”
Let’s translate that tortured language: The two companies have decided they’ll soon start planning to make a plan. In other words, they’re talking. Not investing, or building, or signing a contract, or committing. Talking about planning. Blue Castle’s ludicrously positive spin on its stalled project has reared its sad head before. Last spring, the company sought to get the Utah Legislature to force the TransWest transmission company to “tie in” to the Green River nuclear reactors, a move that would have possibly killed that company’s serious and important bid to move wind power from Wyoming to southern California.
Thankfully, the adults in the room won out. Far from requiring TransWest to tie transmission into the nuclear project, Blue Castle’s bid was whittled down to what amounts to no more than a requirement that TransWest “inform” Blue Castle of its plans.
That less-than-impressive outcome didn’t stop Blue Castle from announcing that the legislation “ensures access to new transmission capacity solicitation” in its usual indecipherable hyperbole.
Similarly, in 2013, Blue Castle attempted to force Utah ratepayers to shoulder nuclear power’s sky-high costs. This situation ended embarrassingly when the bill’s sponsor publicly withdrew his support for the measure on the Senate floor. How did Tilton report this significant setback for Blue Castle? By trumpeting that utilities “must consider nuclear” in their long-term planning … something they were already doing (and roundly rejecting) for decades.
One has to admire Tilton’s moxie, his apparently tireless ability to hype his dying dream, even as evidence to the contrary mounts. One relevant fact: Blue Castle claims it’s preparing a permit application to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the next step on the long road to construction. But records show that Blue Castle hasn’t even communicated with the NRC since 2011.
It’s past time for Blue Castle to admit what we all know: This project is going nowhere fast. It’s past time for the rest of us to get back to the hard work of actually planning Utah’s energy future, rather than endlessly circling the drain of Tilton’s failing nuclear dream.
Christopher Thomas is executive director of HEAL Utah.
