WGBH Journal; Seabrook

And now the GBH Journal. Yeah OK. So why would you hand me a loan that you really love that. Ok I am going as far as for nonviolent demonstrations. I think of a better word to use is unlawful if they come again and unlawful. We certainly plan to meet them with the same fair equitable treatment including the distribution of yogurt to those who are vegetarians. But the sounds of Seabrook New Hampshire are the first to serenade to New Hampshire governor Meldrum Thompson During last year's anti-nuclear demonstration at the Seabrook construction site. And word from the governor himself concerning this year's demonstration planned for this weekend.

Good afternoon and welcome to GBH Journal. I'm Bill countless. We'll have two features on the anti-nuclear demonstrations scheduled to take place over the next four days near the nuclear power plant construction site in Seabrook New Hampshire. And then weeks and the lines were commented on recent news. Seabrook New Hampshire will be the site of a huge demonstration over this weekend. As the climax of over the years planning by the Clamshell Alliance. Thousands of anti-nuclear protesters are expected to gather in Seabrook to protest the

construction of a nuclear power plant. The demonstration is on it but it is not what was originally anticipated by members of the Clamshell Alliance nor will it be the same as last year's illegal occupation of the Seabrooke site. Earlier this week through a series of remarkable negotiations between state officials and members of the Clamshell Alliance. A compromise has been reached which allows the demonstration to proceed to avoid lawbreaking. We'll have a report on this year's planned demonstration from David Friedberg in a few minutes. But first a background basis on some of the legal issues in the case from reporter Greg Fitzgerald. Last year a similar demonstration ended in the arrests of more than fourteen hundred protesters at the site at a cost of the fiscal conservative state of New Hampshire. With hundreds of thousands of dollars the demonstration in Seabrook This year however was to be different. Earlier this week members of the Clamshell Alliance and the Public Service Company of New Hampshire along with the state go she added an agreement which should eliminate

the need for legal proceedings against any protesters. The Alliance have been given an 18 acre site near the construction facilities but away from the actual construction plot they were given the side in the contingency that they would leave at a negotiated time period. The history of the Clamshell Alliance is an interesting one. In a period where political apathy has settled in around many issues which would have aroused attention in the 60s clamshell enjoys the support of thousands willing to face arrest. Another interesting history is that of the legal process by which the nuclear plant under construction has come about. Greg Fitzgerald looks at both issues now in this report. I. This secret plan if we can get it completed by 1984 as it is presently schedule would have taken us from the inception I'm told then a total period of 12 years. SEABROOK originally was to cost us a little over 1 billion dollars. Today

it's scheduled to cost two point one billion dollars. New Hampshire governor Meldrum Thompson is determined to see a nuclear power plant built in Seabrook New Hampshire. Yes seen years of regulatory and legislative action delayed the construction of the plant which he feels must be built to serve the needs of an energy hungry New Hampshire economy. Robert Baucus is an attorney. Baucus is one of the major causes of construction delay at Seabrook. He represents environmental groups in the seacoast area who have won and then lost scores of federal decisions. How many decisions. They are certainly dozens and probably hundreds. There are decisions that are issued within the agencies that are then reversed within the agencies and then the commission reviews the decisions that have been reversed. The EPA decision went first one way then the other way then it was reversed at the national level and then taken to the court of appeals and now that decision is being reviewed was being sought in the Supreme Court of the United States by the utility.

Of a decisional record in this case I mean the pages of written decisions certainly must exceed several thousand pages and where are we now in terms of the challenge. Confused. Baucus has played a major role in just about every federal agency and court decision handed down since the public service company applied for a license from the Atomic Energy Commission in 1973. He represents the seacoast anti pollution League and the New Hampshire Audubon Society. When federal agencies have ruled against local groups Baucus has appealed to the federal courts. The Public Service Company of New Hampshire has done likewise. The nuclear challenge by Baucus has focused on the Environmental Protection Agency and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Formerly the Atomic Energy Commission EPA was concerned primarily with the impact of the condenser cooling system on the offshore waters. And EPA has the duty to help the nation meet the goal of.

Women aiding in the discharge of pollutants into the nation's waters by 1985. One of the pollutants that the Congress felt. Should be eliminated was heat and the nuclear plant at Seabrook if it built if built and if it operates will discharge absolutely incredible amounts of heat waste heat. You know Ed. There's a problem with the intake. They're going to be drawing in 1.2 billion gallons of water today and destroying all life in it. EPA has the duty to ensure that those intakes reflect the best available technology with the NRC. There are different issues and such issues are some of the parties have as to whether or not there should be a requirement to plan the evacuation of Hampton Beach which is only one and a half to two miles from the reactor and we have dealt with the seismic issue where there is some sort of a geologic structure that some characterize as a fault in the area of the site. We have dealt. With. The impact of this

plant on the local environment in terms of the impact on the tourist business and this is completely a tourist area and. We have concentrated on the suitability of the site before the NRC for the whole plant. We have suggested that there must be alternative sites which would be better. We've also to some extent asked whether or not there are alternate energy sources that would be better. The legal challenges to the Public Service Company of New Hampshire have not ended. On Monday hearings will begin on the issue of the cooling towers that will be used to bring the temperature of water used in the reactor core. More close to that of the estuary water as it is emptied into. Attorney Baucus will attempt to sway the NRC commissioners that the cooling towers will not protect ocean waters enough to meet the 1985 Clean Water Act passed by Congress and administered by the EPA. Another court challenge likely is that of construction works in progress charges which the public service company has been approved to pass on to New Hampshire electricity consumers.

Consumers will be paying for the construction of the Seabrook plant before it is functioning in 1085 unless the court reverses the ruling of a New Hampshire Utility Commission separate from the legal challenges to Seabrook is the highly coordinated protest of the Clamshell Alliance. While the alliance has not been a plaintive in the regulatory and judicial cases that have occurred since 1973 they do support the local groups who are playing to Steve Hill a garden. A spokesman for clamshell explained the alliance's history the Clamshell Alliance was formed in July of 1996 in response to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission granting of a construction permit for the Seabrook plant to be built at this time. People had been trying for years and years. All kinds of methods of stopping the plant local people had voted against the plant in town meeting. They had arranged for a legal intervention and raised money and sent lawyers down to Washington that bought it at the EPA and state agencies at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. All of these had failed because he

was a construction license being granted and so they felt that they had no choice but to go ahead and look at nonviolent civil disobedience. The method for opposing nuclear power. The success of the Clamshell Alliance in challenging the Seabrook nuclear facility is evident more in terms of its visibility than in practical terms. Last year more than fourteen hundred supporters of clamshell were arrested at Seabrook during a nonviolent civil disobedience demonstration at the construction site. The demonstration did not stop construction at the site but it did draw a wide national and international public attention to the issue of nuclear power. But the tactics of the demonstration at Seabrook this year may be different for those details. Here is David Freud burg unless someone goes back on their word the three day demonstration which the Clamshell Alliance begins tomorrow in Seabrook will proceed legally and peacefully. After weeks of uncertainty claim Shell has in effect agreed to the plan offered by New Hampshire's attorney general Thomas RAF to hold a non-disruptive protest at a fenced off parcel of

the construction site and for a fixed time. The public is invited during the day time and especially to the mass rally ecologist Barry Commoner folk singer Pete Seeger and others are scheduled to appear starting Sunday morning at 11 in bringing about the agreement. Attorney General raft has acted against all odds as a kind of peacemaker in sharp contrast to the tough rhetoric of his boss Governor Meldrum Thompson things at first seem to fall apart when clamshell after weeks of internal indecision added several conditions to the plan including a halt in construction of the nuke plant pending resolution of ecological questions now before the EPA when the public service company refused clamshell reverted to its original intention of mass civil disobedience that would be restricted only to those who had undergone nonviolence training by clam activists and demonstrators prepared for a reenactment of

last year's arrests that practically ruptured the Rockingham County judicial system and cost the state of New Hampshire some fifty thousand dollars per day as members of clamshells sat incarcerated in National Guard armories throughout the area as chief prosecutor Carlton Eldridge has maintained a stern posture that lawbreaking would not be tolerated. It's an attempt to breach the continuity of civil authority at Seabrook. It has elements of revolution about it whether you like that or not that's the way it is and we demonstrated rather dramatically that a mass arrest in this situation are counterproductive. We've also established that doing nothing is wrong. Something must be done by the state and first in the law without making arrests. Depending on what the Clamshell Alliance du Tao's carries with it the prospects of a forced confrontation that could mean anything from water to chemical

deterrent to physical force. Eldridge has also been quoted as saying that dogs and bullets might be used to thwart the protesters. The Clamshell Alliance a group that from its inception has stressed absolute Pacifism has already ended at least thirty five hundred activists to the techniques of nonviolence as modeled after Martin Luther King Jr. Mohandas Gandhi and others. At one session protesters braced for the worst water hoses Ajani fed off like fire hydrants and they just take a fire hydrant thing and they just shoot it on demonstrators. The force of a fire hydrant is enough to break your ribs. Or break your neck. And so if you're confronted with hoses the thing to do is to sit down. Cross-legged on the ground and hold your head really close to your body so that what's exposed to the hose is your back and they have hoses that are so powerful they can just literally blow you out of the campground. And so we don't know

exactly the velocity of water that they do intend to bring up. But again the affinity group should probably weigh in quick decision making form. Which will run through when I finish with this to give the group an opportunity to really come to some type of quick decision making on hoses or dogs or something else. But you can see that with horses or dogs or hoses. But the policy is generally the same to be still be non-confrontational. Cover your body. And with hoses make sure your back is the only thing that's hit first. The other thing is if you're close to a tree climb it. If you can get to any wooded areas it's suggested that you get KO'd to a wooded area if you can get out of the way. Those who plan to camp at the protest site still must have undergone training by clamshell but the threat of a confrontation seems to have disappeared last week. Sea Coast residents who have been active with the group feared that

an illegal protest would alienate local citizens who have otherwise tended to oppose the Seabrook plant. And again after much wrangling within clamshell the group decided to call off any lawbreaking that cleared the way for acceptance of the basic proposal hammered out by Attorney General RAF. What I have tried to do is to structure a situation in this case where the ends of all concerned are met without the law being broken. The public service company. So long as they hold a valid construction permit has a right in my view to proceed with construction at whatever pace they see fit. They should not have to lose an hour of. Work on that project because of outside influence or hindrance so long as the Nuclear Regulatory Agency and the courts have given them the go ahead. The people of Seabrook and the people in Rockingham County have a right to go about their normal business

in their normal fashion without interruption or interference or hindrance by outside forces if they want to go to the store on Saturday 24th they want to be able to go to that store and the stores that exist along Route 1 in Seabrook should be able to open should be able to be open and function without interruption reference. You know in a similar fashion and you know equal significant those persons who hold views in good conscience contrary to the decisions of the court and the regulatory agencies in connection with this project have a right so long as they stay within the bounds of war to assemble peaceably and speak freely so as to make their point known. No one of these groups interests supersedes any of the others or should violate any of the others and attempt to reconcile these interests at times competing. The state stands as squarely in the middle.

New Hampshire's attorney general Thomas Rath who will be watching carefully this weekend as anti-nuclear activists converge on Seabrook and supporters of nuclear power rally in a counter demonstration scheduled Sunday for Manchester WGBH radio will present a special report titled power in Seabrook which can be heard this coming Monday night at 8:00 for GBH Journal. I'm David Floyd Burke. Commentary on the first week of summer has been a week of political bank president Congress legislature and locality.

The city you know voted to to want to close two schools to adjust to the decline in pupil population which is national save the schools movement lays their heavy defeat to the local fallout from California's anti-tax Proposition 13 in the Massachusetts legislature anti-tax activity was stirred. The Senate Ways and Means Committee voted to restrict the annual growth of local budgets to 5 percent. A legislative Constitutional Convention voted to fix a limit on state budget increases to rise it nor a larger percent than the total growth of personal income in the state. This constitutional amendment must pass a reconsideration vote be repassed next year and only then go on the ballot for voter approval. So its completion depends on the political climate. Two years hence the Senate committee action goes to a full Senate vote next week. The Conference of Mayors took the position that tax reform against loopholes in abatement should have priority over tax cuts. But in Washington the president announced he'll forego

tax reform to obtain the tax a tax rebate of 15 billions which is a step down from his earlier figure of 25 billion with taxation issues suspended in national agitation. The most immediate and substantial economy to the consumer came from a Supreme Court ruling. The justices decided unanimously that the government is not required to apply protective duties against lower priced imports of television sets and steel from Japan. The Zenith corporation that brought suit was joined by some steel companies to require the United States Treasury to apply protective duties equal to what they charged was an export subsidy by Japan. So this they evoked a lot of 1897 that calls for duties against bounties and grants equal the subsidy. But the court held the Japanese 15 percent remission of taxes on exports is not a subsidy but an avoidance of double taxation since the imported goods are taxed also in this country. Half the

United States imports from countries that remit taxes on exports. The Treasury said and and Zenit claim would have cost consumers tens of millions a year. Two other items are good news for consumers. The American Medical Association urged restraint on doctors in increasing their fees which have been a major factor in inflated health costs. And the NBA announced that they will start stocking on branded goods on their stores. These generally sell about 30 percent below brand name foods. This to begin in their stores in the South as a test. If the consumer was again a buyer court action union labor was the loser in the success of the filibuster against the labor reform bill that the president and the Congress majority of pushed to strengthen the law against such scofflaw anti-union companies as the J.P. Stephens textile Empire after the sixth attempt at closure again fell two votes short of the needed 60 Senate leader Byrd had the bill returned to committee.

It's only instruction is not to bring in a new bill before July 15 to give the Senate a breather for other issues. But no further action is expected on this session. The drive for it has exhausted and frustrated political energy. The beleaguered equal rights amendment lost another round in Illinois where again failed by an 0 2 vote short of the required two thirds. One last attempt at a reconsideration holds little prospect of change. Illinois has been the only northern state holding out against the US which needs three more states by next March unless the deadline is extended. And this seems to raise as much opposition as the amendment itself in international affairs the administration has been pains to reassure concerned Congressman. It does not intend to let the Cold War heat up. Secretary Bennett said the administration does not plan to mirror Soviet moves in Africa and aims at widening areas of cooperation. President Carter took occasion of a meeting of the Organization of American States one

South American dictators that continued flagrant violation of human rights will prove costly in relations with Washington. Washington's reaction to Prime Minister Baggins uncompromising stand has been restrained. Bacon would have none of the proposals of recognition of Palestinians keep the status quo five years and look at it again. This stonewalling brought an expression of disappointment even from substantial support of Israel as Senator Javits the Israeli cabinet gave the wrong message. But President Carter limited his response to praise of the moderation he saw and said that reaction the administration will try again will ask Egypt and Jordan to put together a new approach through Israel a merger of two giant conglomerates was accepted by the Justice Department over the concern of its anti-trust division that it would reduce competition and steel industry for the result joins two of the largest steel companies Jones Laufman and Youngstown State and two. But Attorney General Bell created on the ground of the failing company law which exempts from

anti-trust Youngstown is a failing company. It's closing down plants in Youngstown a few months ago put thousands out of work and undermined the economy of that steel city. A much agitated plan of a Nazi march in Skokie Illinois which courts have refused to stop has been called off by its promoters when they want to permit for a demonstration in a Chicago park. Renewed reports of possible compromise of the energy bill in Congress lack enough conviction for Secretary Slesinger. He let it be known this week that his department is prepared to stand by gasoline rationing program has insurance he said. In Massachusetts politics throbs as well as the close of the legislature is held up over taxes and abortion. The anti-abortionists seek to hold the budget hostage. Governor Akaka said yesterday he will not let the legislature go until it deals with the property tax and purges the budget and the anti-abortion amendment a measure he'll veto when it's isolated. The governor made his announcement for re-election yesterday leading a flurry of

announcements most of them aimed at Senator Breaux who persists in his own nomination. Secretary of State Paul Gazi resisted the strong pressure of former supporters that he not oppose Congressman Paul Tsongas for the Democratic nomination because it will run he said. Another entry against Brock is Howard Phillips a former conservative Republican of the Nixon administration who now announced himself as a Democrat but declaring for the same set of appeals to the right for man to bussing anti-tax anti-abortion anti social programs. Senator Brooke has won some sympathy vote for the vengeful treatment by his womenfolks evident in letters to the editor and statements of Christ by such respected public figures as just Spaulding the senator's troubles have stimulated candidacies against him but the publicly expressed hesitancy of male white and of the field raises a question whether Brooks travels will make a good issue run against crime. Just as Robert Martin was completed before the Senate Supreme Court

whose verdict as to discipline or dismemberment is expected next week President Carter spelled out his position on reform of veteran's preference. He'd allow veterans a one time hiring advantage within 15 years of their service veterans preference should be brought into line with its original purpose he said to help veterans adjust to civilian life. It should be focused where it's most needed. Era veterans and the disabled. Home improvement hints the New York Times yesterday offered to make it easier to get a more out of the garage and install a side door. The completion of the WGBH auction yielded a record eight hundred thirty thousand dollars. But David Ives announced that the total budget is seven million seven hundred thousand of which 4 million has to be raised by listeners and that a million must be raised before the end of the fiscal year August 31. Channel 2 Television listeners received a rare value last night when the program

substituted for the advocates which had to be called off when two participants refused at the last minute to cross a picket line. The pickets of the African National Congress were protesting. Their organization had not been consulted in shaping the advocates question should the United States actively discourage investment in South Africa. This opened the chance for an intellectual treat and a discussion by Christopher Leyden and Harrison Salisbury how the views of Alexander Solzhenitsyn in relation to the American polity and its critics. It was a lucky substitution. The African question is only one of tactics whether it's more effective against apartheid to end investment as the University of Oregon and others have done or to use its investment as a leverage for changes Harvard and others have done. But the philosophical discussion of Salisbury with Leyden was something rare to find on any broadcaster anywhere else. Chantel would use some of it in there knows the night of Solzhenitsyn's I would address. But last night they

gave it flowing. For Friday the 23rd of June 1978. This as been GBH Journal regional news magazine aired Monday through Friday at 4:30. Videos are an editor for The Journal as Marcia heads today's engineer Steve Goldberg. I don't have MS.. It's a fine friendly Friday's add on for a bit of the way I was preparing. Hi this is David Freud Burke inviting you to tune in Monday night at 8:00 for

power in Seabrooks a GBH radio special report it will focus on the protest organized this weekend by the Clamshell Alliance at the construction site of a nuclear power plant in New Hampshire. We'll cover that demonstration. And provide background reports to unravel the heated dispute over the hazards of nuclear energy. That's a power in Seabrook Monday night at 8:00. This is the GBH in Boston. Now we invite you to stay tuned for all things considered the program coming to you from the nation's capital. Local broadcast of all things considered is made possible in part by a grant from the general had found ation. Good evening from National Public Radio.