Securing Our Community: Indian Point

As home to Indian Point, our district is on the front line of homeland security defense. Sue Kelly has left a ticking time bomb in our district. Four years after plans of American nuclear power plants were found in Afghanistan, Indian Point remains a major threat that poses serious health and safety risks to our community. The physical plant continues to be vulnerable to attack by even small groups of terrorists. In addition, Indian Point continues to be cited for safety and environmental problems. Sue Kelly has done little to remedy this danger. After seeing the devastating effects of poor planning in the Bush Administration's handling of Hurricane Katrina it has become even more important to have an effective voice in Congress advocating for true accountability and planning.

As your Congressman, I will work toward the closure of Indian Point, replacing it with cleaner and more efficient alternative energy sources. However, the security concerns are too pressing to wait. When elected, I will immediately move to secure Indian Point. We must recognize the facility's current national security implications and immediately secure the area, and we also must immediately assemble realistic and comprehensive emergency and evacuation plans in the event of an emergency prior to the plant conversion.

Increase attack preparedness. There are immediate, concrete steps we must take to improve the security of Indian Point. A recent simulated "attack" found that trained terrorists could breach Indian Point's security perimeter almost at will, and plant explosives near pools containing spent nuclear fuel in less than 40 seconds. And according to an internal review conducted by Entergy, the company that owns Indian Point, only 19 percent of its security officers believe they could adequately defend the plant. The federal government must raise the requirements of the types of threats Indian Point's private security force is mandated by law to defend against, and improve the system that tests whether a nuclear facility is adequately prepared to meet these security requirements. As your Congressman, I will fight for the safety of those in the 19th District and all American citizens.

Develop effective emergency planning. According to a 2003 study commissioned by Governor George Pataki, the current emergency plans are based on unrealistic assumptions about the behavior of evacuees in crises, and do not fully take into account the possibility of a terrorist attack. Moreover, a recent Marist Institute poll found that the overwhelming majority of Hudson Valley residents are not informed of what is expected of them in the event of an emergency. Sue Kelly, in a dangerous abdication of responsibility, has failed to ensure an adequate emergency plan for our region. After Hurricane Katrina, we saw just how devastating the lack of planning and forethought can be. The ineffective Bush Administration allowed an entire city to be catapulted into chaos. This can happen to the Hudson Valley unless we drastically revise our emergency plans. I will initiate an overhaul of the current emergency plans for areas within both ten and fifty miles of Indian Point, and fund a major public education campaign to ensure that every family knows what to do in an evacuation.

Convert the plant. In the long-run, we absolutely need to convert Indian Point and make use of that facility for the production of alternative energy. We need to retrain the employees in order to save their jobs, and we need to clean areas surrounding the facility for the benefit of our environment.

Increase local influence. The health and security risks from Indian Point are borne by our community, yet our citizens have little say in the process. Local concerns about safety are regularly ignored by the federal agencies responsible for Indian Point, and those same agencies provide very little information about how they make critical safety decisions for us. As your representative to the federal government, I guarantee that local voices will be heard in all major decisions concerning the safety of Indian Point.