March 29, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Allied to close Maine Yankee

On Aug. 21 a request to invoke a petition for referendum was filed at the secretary of state’s office. The request was filed by the Don’t Waste Maine Alliance. The alliance board members are designated members of groups with long experience and new groups that were formed to protect citizens in their towns from the threat of a low-level radioactive waste dump.

The alliance was created to complete one goal: to remove the largest generator of low-level radioactive waste in Maine. The Maine Department of Environmental Protection, in its annual report, proves that the Maine Yankee atomic power plant creates 100 percent of all the Class B and C categories and the majority of mixed Class A category of low-level radioactive wastes.

DEP records also show that Maine Yankee spumes thousands of curies of isotopes out of its stacks and uses the ocean bay as a dumping ground. These releases are all allowed by the infamous Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Maine Yankee also is the only generator that creates high-level nuclear waste in Maine.

The alliance members are extremely knowledgeable, trained by the experience of having to deal with an unconstitutional federal and state regulatory program. The shelves of the group’s offices bulge with reams of documents, facts and figures. The reasons beyond targeting Maine Yankee for removal are justified and crystal clear to the alliance and its supporters.

Maine Yankee and the governor have vowed to convince Maine citizens not to sign a petition to create a referendum to remove this nuclear power plant from the annual waste stream in Maine. Other supporters of Maine Yankee have already fallen in line. It is no surprise to us to see false, cruel and misleading articles written in the newspapers that helped Maine Yankee in the last referendums.

It is significant that three referendums were held in the past. Those who voted against Maine Yankee were voting from an educated platform. We are now targeting those who were confused by a $6 million ad campaign. The supporting newspapers give new meaning to the constitutional right to freedom of speech. They see it as their freedom and not ours.

The governor, Maine Yankee and its supporters are deathly afraid that when we get the signatures we can and will win the referendum in November 1993.

The alliance has vowed and is compelled not to use the methods of false portrayals that have been used by the governor, Maine Yankee, and certain newspapers. We only ask that the citizens be given their constitutional right to choose whether they want to sign their names on the petition.

Phillip Merletti of Lee is the northern director of the Don’t Waste Maine Alliance.


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