For Immediate Release
Wednesday, February 1, 2012

ContactCourtney Hanson
courtney@wand.org
404.524.5999

Department of Energy refuses to restore environmental monitoring to Georgia communities near nuclear site

ATLANTA-The Department of Energy (DOE) announced Tuesday that it does not plan to restore environmental monitoring to Georgia communities surrounding the Savannah River Site (SRS), a US nuclear weapons complex notorious for its Cold War legacy radioactive waste.

This monitoring, which was cut in Georgia 2003, tests drinking water, rain, crops, fish, air and more near SRS in order to protect residents in poor and rural areas, including Georgia’s Burke and Screven Counties, where many people rely on water from private wells, home-grown crops and fish from the Savannah River.

“The DOE’s obstruction to environmental monitoring in Georgia is a gross example of environmental injustice,” Bobbie Paul, Georgia WAND Executive Director said. “Radiation does not acknowledge state boundaries. The people living downwind and downstream of SRS deserve to know what’s in the water, air and food that they consume.”

In 2010, then DOE Assistant Secretary, Dr. Ines Triay pledged that monitoring would be restored to Georgia with a 5-year contract independent of any restrictions from SRS.   In February 2011, SRS and DOE reached a deal with the Georgia Environmental Protection Division for $700,000 annually with the agreement that the check would be delivered to Georgia within 30 days. The money was never sent and in July 2011, DOE reported they would only fund $300,000 annually, less than half of what the program received annually when the its funding was cut in 2003. Now, the offer is off the table.

The DOE, which still funds $1.5 million annually for monitoring in South Carolina, said funding it in Georgia would be redundant, and that the money is not available. But Georgia citizens living near SRS are concerned about their safety.

“I’ve lost sisters, brothers, cousins and friends to cancer. Every family I know has lost somebody,” Annie Laura Stephens, president of the Burke County National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, who grew up and lives near SRS, said. “We’ve tried to have meetings to find out what’s going on in our area, we’re still in the dark. It seems that nobody is listening but Jesus.”

The most recent Georgia monitoring data (from 2002) released in 2004 by the Georgia Environmental Protection Division shows elevated levels of radioactive tritium in Georgia communities surrounding SRS. The report showed dangerously high levels in river water, drinking water, fish and leafy vegetation.

Known by local residents as ‘the bomb plant’, SRS is currently tasked with waste management, waste clean-up after reprocessing, plutonium disposition, and tritium production for nuclear weapons. It is a national superfund site, and has a legacy of contamination spanning back to the Cold War, which is why environmental monitoring was originally implemented there.

###

Press Releases

10/21/11 SRS radioactive emissions found higher than first reported

10/13/11 Blue Ribbon Commission to meet in Atlanta, hear from local groups on nuclear waste

10/6/11 All day Peace in the Park to mark decade at war with Afghanistan

10/4/11 Georgia WAND exposes lack of environmental monitoring; presses Dept. of Energy for accountability

9/22/11 Dr. Helen Caldicott, world renowned nuclear expert, to make appearances in Atlanta

8/22/11 Press Conference to mark 9 years of Stand for Peace

8/11/11 Georgia WAND Continues Legal Challenge of Plant Vogtle Expansion

8/6/11 Media Advisory - Visions and Voices of Peace Hiroshima Remembrance Event

7/29/11 Georgia WAND to hold press conference, distribute press packets regarding nuclear power in Georgia at Public Service Commission meeting

7/5/11 Georgia Women's Action for New Directions to hold press conference at Public Service Commission meeting, discuss proposed Georgia Power risk sharing mechanism

6/2/11 Nuclear power before and after Fukushima- An Evening with Stephanie Cooke

5/26/11 Hundreds of mothers, doctors, concerned Atlanta residents to demand protection from toxic mercury at EPA hearing today

5/10/11 Georgia Redistricting Alliance announces redistricing community event in Athens

4/15/11 Georgia WAND Seeks NRC Suspension of Reactor Licensing at Plant Vogtle, Urging Serious Review of Fukushima Implications

4/14/11 Georgia WAND to join largest grassroots training in history, advocate clean energy policy in the U.S.

4/13/2011 Georgia WAND Presents Mother's Day for Peace 2011 featuring Winona LaDuke

4/8/11 Georgia WAND members talk to decision makers in DC about Southeast Nuclear Issues, assured environmental monitoring in GA a Department of Energy priority

4/1/11 Georgia WAND heads to Washington DC for Nuclear Reality Check calling out U.S. Dept. of Energy projects that put environment, non-proliferation and tax-dollars at risk

3/18/11 Georgia WAND to host Russian Chernobyl scientists to address Japanese nuclear disaster, how it relates to new nuclear reactors proposed in Georgia

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

If the United States doesn't reconsider opening Yucca Mountain, then another national repository to store nuclear waste should be built, an executive with Southern Nuclear said Tuesday.

"We believe that the technical knowledge developed for Yucca Mountain should be preserved," said Paula Marino, vice president of engineering for Southern Nuclear. "Southern supports research design and development to improve on existing designs."

Southern Nuclear, a sister company to Georgia Power, is waiting for federal regulators to issue a key permit to start heavy construction on two nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle, near Augusta. Just as the utility is months away from likely building the first newly permitted nuclear reactors in three decades, a special federal government task force met in Atlanta Tuesday to discuss options for storing nuclear waste.

The Obama administration canceled plans to build a permanent underground nuclear storage facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The Department of Energy formed the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future to find alternative storage options. The commission is recommending, among other things, creating new sites to store nuclear waste and creating an additional agency to oversee that. Money to pay for the sites would come from a taxpayer-supported Nuclear Waste Fund.

Marino said if a new organization was created to handle nuclear waste, it should be depoliticized so that money intended to help pay for nuclear waste storage doesn't get caught up in changing political winds.

Other utilities, including SCANA in South Carolina, are lining up behind Southern Nuclear to build or expand their nuclear plants, bringing the issue of what to do with waste to the forefront. While expensive to build, utilities are turning to nuclear as a way to provide electricity that is less polluting than coal and less dependent on foreign oil.

Southern operates six reactors: two at Vogtle, two at Plant Hatch and two at Plant Farley, in Alabama. The spent

Bobbie Paul addressing the Blue Ribbon Commission

fuel rods are stored in pools of water at Vogtle. At Hatch and Farley, they are kept in dry-cask facilities, a Southern Nuclear spokeswoman said.

The Vogtle project's opponents include the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy and the anti-nuclear group, Georgia WAND. Bobbie Paul, the group's executive director, urged the commission not to create any interim storage facilities or allow waste to be transported anywhere.

"That's an invitation to the nuclear industry to think about nuclear reprocessing," she said.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Thursday, October 6, 2011

http://www.ajc.com/news/occupy-atlanta-joins-friday-1195934.html?cxtype=rss_news

The Occupy Wall Street phenomenon, a movement that has spread from Lower Manhattan to at least 21 cities around the U.S., reaches Atlanta on Friday night during a loosely organized meeting at Woodruff Park downtown.

Calling itself Occupy Atlanta, the local organization will hold an assembly at the park, though an organizer says not to expect bullhorns or chanted slogans. The meeting, said Tim Franzen, is intended to seek a consensus among local members about future plans for social action.

Members of the local group are piggybacking their get-together onto another protest at the park planned by the Georgia Peace and Justice Coalition to mark the 10th anniversary of the war in Afghanistan.

That all-day "Peace Camp" will begin at 8 a.m. Friday morning and will include speakers, workshops and musical performances. A collection of anti-war and faith-based organizations will be represented, including the American Friends Service Committee, the Presbyterian Peacemaking Partnership, the Georgia chapter of Women's Action for New Directions and Iraq Veterans Against the War, according to coordinator Kevin Moran.

Franzen said the Occupy Atlanta representatives plan to hold their assembly at the end of the day, as the planned events are winding down. But while Occupy Atlanta and the Georgia Peace and Justice Coalition share goals, the two groups apparently haven't shared their planning calendars. "These are not coordinated events," said Moran. "They are not hooked up with us."

The peace coalition's goal is to draw attention to the economic costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, said Moran. Occupy Atlanta has broader concerns, said Franzen, including opposition to education budget cuts, support of universal health care and outrage over the execution of Troy Davis. "This movement is about reclaiming America from the corporations that have control of the government," said Franzen.

Moran and Franzen expect "hundreds" of people at the events.

 By Walter C. Jones
Morris News Service
October 4, 2011

http://chronicle.augusta.com/news/government/2011-10-04/protest-demands-ga-monitor-savannah-river-site-environment

 ATLANTA — A group of anti-nuclear activists held a rally on the Capitol steps Tuesday to call for the U.S. Department of Energy to resume funding Georgia’s monitoring of air and water quality for dangerous emissions from Savannah River Site.

The group, Women’s Action for New Directions, said the funding was needed as an early warning against accidental releases of nuclear hazards that could contaminate the air, crops, wildlife and private wells and raise the risk of cancer in people living in Richmond, Burke, Screven, Effingham and Chatham counties.

Dr. Helen Caldicott, a pediatrician who co-founded the group and Physicians for Social Responsibility, contended federal officials feared an objective environmental assessment because it would show that the residents of those counties would have to be relocated.

“I think one of the reasons they don’t want to test is because it’s obvious that area is highly polluted with radioactive materials,” she said, adding that SRS should be shut down completely.

For 10 years, the Department of Energy provided money for the Georgia Environmental Protection Division to monitor wells, air samples, wildlife and crops in those counties.

In 2003, the policy changed, and the funding stopped the next year.

The state continues to use its own money to monitor areas around commercial reactors, which includes Plant Vogtle near Waynesboro.

“We’ve not seen anything unusual,” said Jim Hardeman, the manager of EPD’s environmental radiation program.

DOE still funds $1.5 million for monitoring by South Carolina annually.

Savannah River Site

The South Carolina Depart­ment of Health and Environmental Control collects samples of air, soil, sediment, vegetation, fish, water, milk and game animals to determine the amount of radionuclides and chemicals present.

 

 

 

Sarita Chourey, of Morris News Service in Columbia, contributed to this article.

October 2011
By John Raymond

http://www.zcommunications.org/contents/181277/print

Undeterred by the nuclear power industry’s latest radiological catastrophe in Japan, the Obama administration is moving to put the stamp of approval on a far-reaching nuclear expansion project that has raised charges of environmental injustice from regional watchdog groups who have been fighting the project for over six years.

 Once deemed the “poster child” of a U.S. nuclear revival by the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), the Washington-based propaganda wing of the nuclear establishment, the project would put two more nuclear reactors on a site in Burke County, Georgia in a black farming community where cancer mortality and infant mortality rates increased sharply after two existing reactors on the site went online in the late 1980s.

 The project—put forward by the Southern Company, a U.S. utility headquartered in Atlanta for its Plant Vogtle nuclear station—is the furthest along the track for approval of 14 reactors proposed for 7 sites (2 per site) throughout the southeast. All projects are based on a new reactor model known as the AP1000 sold by Westinghouse-Toshiba. The AP1000 is on the fast track for final certification, but remains the target of challenges over safety design flaws identified by nuclear engineers in and outside of the industry. Despite the unresolved issues, the NRC is expected to certify the reactor before the end of the year, allowing construction to begin.

 The increase in cancer and mortality data is shown in a report commissioned by the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League (BREDL) based in Glendale Spring, North Carolina and a lead member in the regional coalition opposing the Plant Vogtle expansion. 

 The  Report 

The report, “Health Risks of Adding New Reactors to the Alvin Vogtle Nuclear Plant,” showed changes in health status before and after the startup of the two reactors. It was based on data for annual deaths between 1979-2003 maintained by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and found: “The cancer death rate for children and adolescents in the 11 counties closest to Vogtle rose 58.5 percent, compared to a 14.1 percent decline nationally. The death rate in Burke County rose sharply for all cancers, especially for blacks and for children and young/ middle age adults, while U.S. rates declined. In the late 1980s, Burke County cancer mortality rates were below the U.S., but became considerably higher.”

In studies of radiation health risk, “childhood cancer is perhaps the most-studied disease, due to the increased risk from radiation exposures to the fetus, infant, and child,” the report stated. The report included data on environmental contamination based on annual reports submitted by the utility to the NRC. Data on selected water samples and sediment showed that, “From 1987-1990 (as Vogtle began operating) to 1991-2003 (during full operation), average radioactivity levels in drinking water, river water, and sediment downriver or at the Vogtle plant rose:

• Beta in Raw Drinking Water + 37.1 percent  
• Beta in Finished Drinking Water + 17.8 percent,
  Beryllium-7 in Sediment + 39.5 percent 
• Cesium-137 in Sediment + 37.4 percent 
• Tritium in River Water + 44.6 percent

“The report found that increases in average levels of radioactivity in the local soil, sediment, and water are roughly equivalent to the increase in cancer deaths in Burke County,” Mangano said in a recent interview.... This should be a big red flag for the continued operations of Vogtle 1 and 2, and for the potential startup of Vogtle 3 and 4.”

Mangnao noted that the report “underlines not just the increases in local contamination and cancer rates but also represents a lack of public accountability by the public utilities and government regulators to the public. What’s in this report should be presented by the government and the utilities to the public on an ongoing basis.”

A news feature aired on CNN last year (“Town fights new nuclear plants,” 4/16/10) cited Mangano’s report in a story about the plight of residents in Shell Bluff who have asked for—but failed to get—environmental testing done to determine the cause of their high cancer rates. The story noted that a radiological monitoring program under Georgia’s Environmental Protection Division and funded by the U.S. Department of Energy was terminated in 2004.

Until DOE cut the funds, Georgia’s EPD published reports on testing results on water, fish, and other samples near state facilities that emitted ionizing radiation, comparing the data to background levels. Test results for Vogtle from 1995 to 2002 showed that it was the source of 2 to 50 times the elevation of radionuclides contaminating sediment, river water, fish, and drinking water.

“The funding for the program was cut off around the same time we heard about the so-called nuclear renaissance and we smelled a rat,” said Bobbie Paul, executive director of Georgia WAND (Women’s Action for New Directions), which works on health and social justice issues. “We believed Southern Company didn’t want any kind of sampling or testing that would disturb this major financial investment that was going to double the size of Vogtle.”

The CNN story said that DOE had been contacted and stated in response that funding would be restored, but to date that has not happened. “We look at Vogtle first through the lens of the environmental justice issue,” said Paul. “The people who live in Shell Bluff are predominately African American, they’re poor people who farm the land. They have very few services and they live directly downwind and downstream from both Plant Vogtle and the Savannah River Site, the old bomb plant. And they have cancers—pancreatic, stomach, liver, brain, colon cancers.”
 

Stockpiling

The Savannah River Site (SRS), which produced plutonium and tritium and other weapons materials from five nuclear reactors, is now the site of the DOE’s tritium extraction operation producing tritium for the U.S. nuclear stockpile. An estimated 37,000,000 gallons of high-level liquid radioactive waste from weapons production are stored on the site in 49 underground tanks (many leaking, and eight or more near or below the water table, according to a 2010 GAO report). “Tritium levels have been read on the site at over 220,000 picocuries per liter when the accepted level is 20,000, and we’re trying to get it reduced to four or five hundred as a public health goal,” Paul said.

“What I see happening in Burke County is another injustice heaped upon a community which has already had major injustices heaped upon it in the past,” said BREDL’s science director, Lou Zeller. BREDL submitted a further report citing radiological pollution from Plant Vogtle to the NRC last year and charged the agency had failed to consider “the full impact” of two additional nuclear plants on the site. They “would double the danger of radiation exposure, double the risk of nuclear accidents, and double the impact on future generations.”

The report, based on utility data, said that the existing reactors discharge 10,000 gallons of liquid waste per minute into the Savannah River. “This includes over 1,400 curies/year of nuclear fission products and tritium and two new proposed reactors would increase this radioactive pollution by an additional 2,020 curies per year.”

The report further noted that local residents depend on the Savannah River for fish for food. Testing has shown that river fish are contaminated with cesium-137. Tests in the vicinity of the Vogtle plant have routinely found cesium-137 in the edible parts of fish. Exposure to cesium-137 is linked to increased risk of cancer. “Radioactive cesium-137 is of particular concern because levels actually increase when fish is cooked,” the report said. One study found that cesium levels increase by 32 percent when fish are fried with breading and by 62 percent when fried without breading.

Zeller said the addition of two more reactors at Plant Vogtle would “double the danger of radiation exposure, double the risk of nuclear accidents, and double the impact on future generations.... The NRC seems to be immune to arguments about environmental justice. We’ve raised arguments on issues of environmental justice going back to 2006 and they were never even considered by the NRC. They were dismissed out of hand.”

In early August, 25 environmental groups across the country filed separate legal challenges with the NRC over pending actions involving 19 reactor facilities including Plant Vogtle. The motions were filed following the NRC’s recent report containing recommended actions based on “lessons learned” from the Fukushima disaster.

 The report calls for regulatory changes in reactor licensing. In their challenges, the groups stated that under federal laws, “the NRC may not issue or renew a single reactor license until it has either strengthened regulations to protect the public from severe accident risks or until it has made a careful and detailed study of the environmental implications of not doing so, the groups said in a statement.”

John Raymond is a freelance writer based in New York City.

For Immediate Release
Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Contact:
Courtney Hanson
(404) 524-5999
courtney@wand.org

Who: Georgia WAND welcomes Dr. Helen Caldicott,  an Australian native, pediatrician, physician, leading anti-nuclear activist, Nobel Peace Prize winner and renowned author, speaker, radio host and founder of Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament (WAND).

When: Monday, October 3 through Wednesday, October 5 What:  Dr. Caldicott will headline two public events. Press are invited to both events, with personal interviews granted on a  rolling basis. Phone interviews available immediately. In-person interviews available Monday, October 3 – Wednesday, October 5. Contact Courtney Hanson, 404.524.5999, 308.631.8543 ir courtney@wand.org for more information.

“An Aroused Woman is Unstoppable”
Monday, October 3, 6:30 reception, 7:15 program
7 Stages, 1105 Euclid Avenue Northeast

Dr. Caldicott will address issues like women, war, and the future of nuclear in a post-Fukushima world, at the educational and theatrical event, which kicks off a week’s worth of programs marking the tenth anniversary of the Afghanistan war. 7 Stages directors Del Hamilton and Faye Allen will also resurrect their stand-out comedy routine on the pitfalls of putting on a protective hazmat suit. Presented by Georgia WAND and 7 Stages

“Lunch and Learn”
Tuesday, October 4, 12:15 pm
Rollins School of Public Health
1518 Clifton Road, Atlanta, GA 30322

Dr. Helen Caldicott, will lead a discussion with her peers in the medical profession on the health effects of radiation. She will address issues such as the links between radiation and cancer and illnesses in areas surrounding nuclear reactors, like those in Shell Bluff, Georgia, near nuclear Plant Vogtle.  A portion of her talk will also address the fallout after Fukushima and what the radioactive releases in Japan have meant for the health of its residents, especially women and children.

Why:  The nuclear regulatory commission is currently hearing testimony that will decide whether two new reactors at Georgia’s nuclear Plant Vogtle will be constructed next to the plant’s current two reactors. Meanwhile, the world continues to watch the fallout in Japan as evacuations continue, parents begin testing radiation levels of the environment and food for fear of their childrens’ safety, and countries such as Germany take heed of this disaster as a warning and vow to back out of nuclear power all together. Dr. Caldicott’s medical expertise on the effects of radiation and other nuclear contaminants such as tritium on health, and her  lifelong dedication to nuclear disarmament make her a leading voice on nuclear issues and, importantly, how we go forward.

Contact:                                                                                 
Courtney Hanson
(404) 524-5999
courtney@wand.org

What:  Georgia WAND will host a press conference exposing the Department of Energy’s (DOE)  failure to stand behind their agreement to implement environmental testing and monitoring in Georgia, specifically in rural, poor counties near Savannah River  Site (SRS). A US nuclear weapons site, known by local residents as ‘the bomb plant’, SRS is currently tasked with Cold War legacy waste management, waste clean-up after reprocessing, plutonium disposition, and tritium production for nuclear weapons.

Press packets will be available with a complete timeline of DOE monitoring in Georgia, an executive summary of the most recent agreement between Georgia Environmental Protection Division (EPD) and DOE to restore this monitoring, a map showing what and where this testing would monitor, and the last known monitoring report (2004) by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources showing elevated levels of radioactive contaminants in these areas.

Who: Georgia Women’s Action for New Directions, citizens of Shell Bluff, near SRS, Dr. Helen Caldicott (physician and leading nuclear expert), local legislators, and representatives from local environmental, women’s and health NGOs

When: Tuesday, October 4, 2011, 10 am

Where: Georgia State Capitol steps, Washington Street Side

Why:  Georgia WAND members and concerned citizens continue to get the ‘runaround’. Georgia WAND has worked to restore this testing for the past eight years, having collaborated most recently with both DOE headquarters in Washington DC and Georgia’s Environmental Protection Division (EPD), with which they reached an agreement for monitoring.  This monitoring would restore sampling, testing and reporting of all radioactive contaminants in soil, crops, air, livestock, and water to Georgia counties that lie directly across the Savannah River from SRS. However, DOE bureaucracy has obstructed this funding of an environmental monitoring program to the State of Georgia. Georgia residents continue to suffer.

This State monitoring program was cut in 2003, after ten years of intact testing, put in place as a result of an Agreement in Principle between the State (EPD) and federal (DOE) agencies. A national superfund site, SRS has a legacy of contamination spanning back to the cold war, which is why this monitoring was initially established. This testing helped protect residents in poor and rural areas surrounding SRS, where many people rely on water from private wells, home-grown crops and fish from the Savannah River. In 2010, then DOE Assistant Secretary, Dr. Ines Triay, pledged to that monitoring would be restored Georgia. DOE has yet to fulfill their promise. Georgia WAND sees this as another instance of negligence by the federal government and lack of accountability and transparency. This is a prime example of environmental injustice in our country.

The Atlanta Constitution reports Brent Scowcroft, co-chairman of President Obama’s Blue Ribbon Commission On America’s Nuclear Future, said he and his fellow commissioners will take a look at the most radioactive site in the United States (measured by curies): The Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site. He also said they will visit the controversial Plant Vogtle nuclear power reactor complex, located just across the Savannah River from SRS on the Georgia side.

Large amounts of tritium, a gas used to boost nuclear explosions and also a radioactive element produced in civilian power plants, has been detected in the Savannah River, along with many other radioactive by products. The Savannah River is the 4^th most polluted river in the United States.  Critics such as WAND Georgia point out that cancer rates among poor residents along the river occur with alarming frequency.  Nuclear power proponents say the amount of tritium released into the environment meet state standards.

The Blue Ribbon visit comes as new nuclear facilities are either under construction or being proposed for both SRS and Plant Vogtle.

For more go to http://www.ajc.com/news/nuclear-waste-panel-to-634105.html

The Atlanta Constitution reports Brent Scowcroft, co-chairman of President Obama’s Blue Ribbon Commission On America’s Nuclear Future, said he and his fellow commissioners will take a look at the most radioactive site in the United States (measured by curies): The Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site. He also said they will visit the controversial Plant Vogtle nuclear power reactor complex, located just across the Savannah River from SRS on the Georgia side.

Large amounts of tritium, a gas used to boost nuclear explosions and also a radioactive element produced in civilian power plants, has been detected in the Savannah River, along with many other radioactive by products. The Savannah River is the 4^th most polluted river in the United States.  Critics such as WAND Georgia point out that cancer rates among poor residents along the river occur with alarming frequency.  Nuclear power proponents say the amount of tritium released into the environment meet state standards.

The Blue Ribbon visit comes as new nuclear facilities are either under construction or being proposed for both SRS and Plant Vogtle.

For more go to http://www.ajc.com/news/nuclear-waste-panel-to-634105.html

I wanted to respond to Doug Everett's response, "PSC is watching nuclear plant projects closely," to Joan King's column last week. I attended the PSC meeting in Atlanta on July 6 on the rate sharing mechanism, which was open for public input. The process, which is supposed to allow public comment to the commissioners, was a sham.

This was the first hearing post-Fukushima accident. So naturally, the public had increasing concerns around the PSC's business-as-usual approach of whatever Southern Co. wants, Southern Co. gets.

I have never been so outraged. Not only did Commissioner Everett not listen to the public speakers, he was actually badgering them on what they could say at the microphone. See transcripts at www.psc.state.ga.us (Docket 29849).

As the meeting went on, it became increasingly clear he was not interested in hearing the public concerns about new information that became available as the result of the disaster at Fukushima as it pertained to the regulation of Plant Vogtle's proposed reactors three and four.

Because of Commissioner Everett's blatant disregard for new and relevant information as well as the public concern, he clearly isn't watching anything but obstacles standing in the way of Southern Co. profit.

Amanda Hill-Attkisson
East Point

Amanda Hill-Attkisson is Georgia WAND's Managing Director