A full plate of Charlestown Tapas sizzle

News briefs from Progressive Charlestown

By Will Collette

• Yet more problems at nearby Millstone nuke
• Conservancy closes land deal, but what about the Comprehensive Plan?
• Earthquakes: is the Big One on the way?
• Jobs: more than 50 new South County listings, prospects at Electric Boat and at Cape Wind
• New ordinance idea for the CCA Party

Feds find more safety problems at Millstone and administer a wicked harsh slap to the wrist

Local and state officials in Connecticut are dismayed that the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, when confronted with the Millstone Nuclear Power plant’s intransigence in fixing faulty cooling pumps, only issued the lowest level notice of violation.

According to state Nuclear Energy Advisory Council (NEAC) chair Bill Sheehan, Millstone’s violations are "at least a yellow flag, if not a red flag. Why suddenly does it look like they're having performance problems?"

The NEAC was set up to monitor the plant when there was, as New London Day editor Paul Choiniere put it, “a culture that discouraged plant workers from speaking up about technical problems, punishing those who did point to performance errors, while rewarding those who kept such issues covered up.”

Millstone changed owners in 2000 when it was bought by Virginia-based Dominion Energy, but in recent years, the problems of the past seem to have reoccurred. Among the most serious problems are persistent cooling pump problems. When pumps fail to pump enough water into the plant’s reactors, there is the real risk of a catastrophic meltdown…and remember that Charlestown is only 20 miles downwind. Read: Millstone Security Inspection Report.

Congratulations, Nature Conservancy but what about the Comprehensive Plan?

Cover page to the Yankee Magazine story on Charlestown nuclear accident

First, the good news. The Nature Conservancy used a grant it received from the Champlin Foundation to buy land to expand the Frances Carter Preserve in Carolina. They completed the deal and added 271 acres bought at a thousand dollars an acre from the General Electric Co.

The land includes the site of the infamous United Nuclear property, site of one of the only industrial deaths from radiation exposure in the US. Robert Peabody of Charlestown was killed at UNC in 1964 and the company shut down shortly afterwards, leaving behind a radioactive mess. 

The site has supposedly been cleaned up, but I doubt it is completely clean based on twenty years of experience with toxic waste problems. Leaving the land unoccupied is, in my opinion, the best option given what may still lie underground.

The Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA Party) is pretty excited about the deal, but if the CCA Party was consistent with its principles, they ought to be outraged. The fact they are not is the bad news.

It seems that the property that is being added to the Preserve and set aside as open space was described in the Charlestown Comprehensive Plan as zoned "Planned Development District (PDD)." The 1992 Comprehensive Plan described the potential for a 54-hole golf course, hotel and spa which obviously didn’t happen.

It has been a CCA Party article of faith that “Thou shalt Not violate the Comprehensive Plan.” Indeed, this was one of several ridiculous reasons the CCA Party has given for attacking the state Water Resources Board’s efforts to buy some undeveloped land from the Glista Family to be set aside as open space to protect water resources beneath.

The CCA Party should explain why the Conservancy deal is different than what the Water Resources Board wants to do, as they are both instances where new open space will be created on land not zoned open space or listed as such in the Charlestown Comprehensive Plan.

Are we about to get “The Big One?”

Not gonna happen here. Footage from quake in Christchurch, New
Zealand last year

Small earthquakes continue to rattle eastern Connecticut with some being felt in our area. About a dozen or so have been recorded in the past couple of weeks in and around Plainfield, CT. This “swarm” of quakes has prompted some people to wonder if they are precursors of a much larger quake.

After all, that’s pretty much how it works out West. Lots of little quakes often lead up to a big one. However, the chances of a quake that could cause serious damage in this area are very slim.

The largest recorded quake in this region was a 5.0 quake in 1883 that was centered in Rhode Island.

Generally, a quake has to measure more than 3.0 to be noticed. Weston Observatory’s senior research scientist John Ebel told the Boston Globe, “There is less than a 1% chance of getting anything larger than a 3.3-magnitude quake.” The largest of the Plainfield quakes measured 3.3.

At a recent public information meeting in Plainfield, scientists could only tell the audience that these earthquakes started up for unknown reasons, can’t be stopped and they can’t say when they will end. That said, there’s no cause for alarm.

Jobs

As usual, we have a number of South County listings pulled from RI Community Jobs, a service of the Swearer Center at Brown University. They put out a great, daily e-mail listing of non-profit jobs in the state and nearby Massachusetts and Connecticut. Click here to sign up.

But one surprising opportunity is Patch's listing of around 50 job openings at Oracle (the computer tech giant) facility in Ashaway. Most of the jobs are technical and managerial but really cover a broad range of skill areas. 

Here are the listings for South County public service jobs:

• Assistant Director (part-time) for the Pettaquamscutt Historical Society in Kingston. Click here for more information.
• Three jobs: Director, a Speech/Language Pathologist and a Speech/Language Pathology Assistant for the J. Arthur Trudeau Memorial Center, Pathways Strategic Teaching Center in Coventry
• Three jobs: Head Counselor-Residential Camp, Kitchen Manager and a Program Director-Residential Camp (Summer) for the YMCA of Greater Providence at Camp Fuller, Wakefield.
• Also, the YMCA of Greater Providence-South County wants to hire a Health & Wellness Coach to work in Peacedale. Click here for more information.
• Director of Development, Graduate School of Oceanography, The University of Rhode Island Foundation at the Kingston and Narragansett Bay campuses. Click here for more information.

General Dynamics jobs at Electric Boat

Local media have been buzzing with the prospect of new jobs re-fitting Navy subs at Electric Boat. 

In my last Tapas report, I offered a cautionary note that General Dynamics is trying to get around its union contracts with its Bath Iron Works shipyard workers in Maine by out-sourcing some of its work to Mexico, and how that does not bode well for prospects here.

General Dynamics may be setting the table for similar outsourcing by raising the challenge that perhaps Rhode Island doesn’t have enough workers with the skills they need.

According to the company president, EB has 3,400 workers at Quonset now and needs to nearly double that workforce, hiring 500-600 this year and hundreds more in each following year. However, he noted that finding qualified workers has been challenging.

Gov. Gina Raimondo said she wants to make sure local high schools and colleges are churning out the kind of workers EB needs and Rep. David Cicilline says he will try to secure federal training money.

All that is well and good, but is based on the presumption that we will have a never-ending need for ultra-high tech submarines. Personally, I believe Electric Boat needs to consider diversifying its product and customer base. Other shipyards dependent on military contracts have started to build commercial ships and maritime projects. I think it’s high time EB did that too.

Here’s one job creator that’s now having some trouble.

Cape Wind doldrums

The Cape Wind turbine project slated to be built in Massachusetts waters off Martha’s Vineyard is scaling back its acquisition of land-based facilities for fabrication and maintenance. Massachusetts utilities pulled out of their deal with Cape Wind to buy their power and that has dealt the project a heavy body blow.

While Cape Wind regroups and looks for a new deal, they dropped their option to lease a large parcel in the Quonset Business Park in North Kingstown.

So far, Deepwater Wind has not had this problem and, in fact, says it is moving ahead rapidly. They also say that they are now anticipating they will be able to produce electricity cheaper than they originally projected from their five-turbine pilot project in the waters east of Block Island.

New ordinance for the CCA Party to consider

Given how much the Charlestown Citizens Alliance hates Progressive Charlestown (making it their top issue in the last two election campaigns), they may be looking for inspiration to, of all places, Saudi Arabia.

The Saudis know how to deal with pesky bloggers, as they have shown by arresting and convicting blogger Raif Badawi of blasphemy. Badawi’s Saudi Liberal Network offended the government with his lively blogging that was judged by the Saudi government to be criminal.

Badawi has been sentenced to be whipped – 1,000 lashes in all with 50 administered per week – and ten years in prison. He underwent his first fifty lashes, but his second round was postponed after worldwide outrage that linked his treatment with the murders at French magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Now that the CCA Party totally controls the Charlestown Town Council, watch for Boss Tom Gentz to finally take action against his favorite enemy. He can easily get his Council colleagues to approve a new ordinance that makes criticizing the CCA Party an offense punishable by 1,000 lashes. 

Boss Gentz, who has used town ordinances to punish his enemies in the past (click here for an example), would probably love to mete out a little Saudi-style justice on the back of yours truly.