Gillibrand seeks funding for Indian Point towns after plant shuts down

U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand is backing a measure that would provide $175 million annually to communities like those around Indian Point and others that will be burdened with spent nuclear waste after the power plants shutdown.

Gillibrand joined lawmakers from Illinois, Maine and Vermont in introducing the STRANDED (Sensible, Timely Relief for America’s Nuclear Districts’ Economic Development) Act to assist communities that are home to shuttered nuclear plants or soon will be.

The funding would be distributed annually over five years through a federal grand program.

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Indian Point will shut down its last working reactor on Friday, after six decades generating power for Westchester County and New York City.

The shutdown is expected to create financial challenges for the village of Buchanan, the town of Cortlandt and the Hendrick Hudson School District, which have relied on Indian Point’s property taxes to fund their budgets.

“After Indian Point shuts down, communities like the Town of Cortlandt and the Village of Buchanan will be, in effect, graveyards for nuclear waste and will suffer losses of tax revenues for critical local services and school funding,” Gillibrand said.

“The federal government has a responsibility to make these affected surrounding communities whole with the compensation needed to build a successful, sustainable and vibrant future," she added.

Indian Point’s owner, Louisiana-based Entergy, has a pending deal to sell the plant’s reactors and some 240 acres along the Hudson River, to Holtec, a New Jersey-based decommissioning firm. Holtec says it will need between 12 and 15 years to demolish the plant and rid the site of radiological waste.

Spent nuclear fuel from the reactors will remain at the site, stored in cement and steel canisters. And they will remain there until the federal government fulfills its promise to store the nation’s nuclear waste.

Efforts to build an underground repository at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, north of Las Vegas, foundered amid political opposition in recent years.

Holtec is hoping to ship the waste to an interim repository in the New Mexico desert, a plan that faces political and regulatory hurdles.

In January, Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed into law a measure that will give the Indian Point communities the authority to tax spent nuclear fuel as real property. The legislation, sponsored by Democrats Pete Harckham in the state Senate and Sandra Galef in the Assembly, is believed to be the first of its kind in the nation.