What are the EJ and nuclear records of Biden's nominees, Gina McCarthy for domestic climate czar, and Jennifer Granholm for Energy Secretary?
Kevin Kamps has served as Beyond Nuclear's radioactive waste specialist since 2007. Before that, he served as nuclear waste specialist at NIRS, from 1999 to 2007. Kamps has also served as a board of directors member for Don't Waste Michigan, the state-wide anti-nuclear coalition, since 1993. From those vantage points, he shares some of his experiences and memories below, re: President-elect Joe Biden's nominees for National Climate Advisor, Gina McCarthy, and Energy Secretary, Jennifer Granholm, in terms of their environmental justice (EJ), racial justice, and social justice records, as well as their nuclear issues-related records.
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Official portrait of U.S. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthyRe: former EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, nominated by Biden for National Climate Advisor, to advise the president on domestic climate change policy, and lead the White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy --
It was on Gina McCarthy's (photo, left) watch, as President Obama's EPA administrator, that the Flint, Michigan drinking water catastrophe unfolded. Flint is majority African American, and a majority of the population lives below the poverty line. EPA's Chicago regional director took the fall for the catastrophe. See a related article I wrote at the time:
On a brighter note, the McCarthy EPA's Clean Power Plan, developed during her administratorship, thankfully did few to no favors for nuclear power. NIRS led the environmental coalition, including Beyond Nuclear, that interacted with EPA at the time, pushing back at the industry lobbyists' attempts to have nuclear power included as a major beneficiary in the Clean Power Plan. That did not happen.
But another action by McCarthy, at the very end of her tenure as EPA administrator, darkens her nuclear legacy. She signed off on the EPA's so-called "Protective Action Guides" (PAGs) for radiation, on the Obama administration's very last days in office in mid-January, 2017. The George W. Bush administration's EPA was not even able to get away with such an outrage. The PAGs McCarthy approved authorized major increases in the amount of radioactivity "allowed" or "permitted" in water, air, food, etc., during an ill-defined nuclear "emergency," lasting an indeterminate amount of time. McCarthy's signature represented a major blow to health and environmental protection under nuclear "emergency" situations. It also set a precedent that nuclear industry lobbyists can now exploit, to try to weaken standards in other areas, such as the "permissible" quantities or concentrations of radioactive pollutants that will be allowed to leak from radioactive waste dumps, or the radiation doses they will be allowed to inflict on unsuspecting members of the general public. Again, NIRS led the environmental coalition effort to stop McCarthy's approval of the PAGs in 2017. Such resistance was successful during the G.W. Bush administration, but alas, McCarthy signed the dangerously weakened PAGs, just before Trump took the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2017!
The Honorable U.S. Representative Elijah Cummings (Democrat-Baltimore), then Ranking Member of the U.S. House Government Oversight and Reform Committee, led the effort to hold officials' feet to the fire re: the Flint drinking water catastrophe. EPA Administrator McCarthy was summoned to testify. So too Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, a Republican (in fact, Granholm's replacement in the office). So too the Emergency Financial Managers Snyder had appointed over Flint, the actual people who approved and enforced the catastrophic decisions, that led to the lead poisoning of more than 9,000 children in Flint, via their families' tap water. An EPA whistleblower out of the Chicago regional office played a major role in revealing this horrific disaster. He had the heart to listen to a Flint mother, who was crying out for help on behalf of her impacted children, and to act. He investigated. Her family's drinking water from the tap not only violated Safe Drinking Water Act levels for lead -- it qualified as hazardous waste, the lead concentration was so off the charts bad. And the rest is a very fraught history of environmental injustice, revealed, and all too slowly and incompletely addressed, not just in Flint, but many other places with similar risks of polluted drinking water supply public health disasters.
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Jennifer M. Granholm's official portrait was unveiled in the state Capitol where it will hang in the Gallery of the Governors. The portrait features the governor amid symbols that tell the story of her administration's efforts to diversify Michigan's economy, educate and train its citizens, and protect them in tough economic times during the two-terms she served as Michigan's 47th governor.Re: former Michigan Attorney General (1999-2003), and Governor (2003-2011), Jennifer Granholm, nominated by Biden for Energy Secretary --
MI's Emergency Financial Manager law is highly controversial. It has mainly been applied to majority African American, and majority below the poverty line, municipalities, such as Benton Harbor and Flint. Rachel Maddow on MSNBC did extensive coverage about the anti-democratic Emergency Financial Manager law in MI, and how it led to the Flint drinking water catastrophe.
As governor, around June 20, 2003, Granholm held a press conference in response to so-called "race riots" in majority (89%) Black, impoverished Benton Harbor, MI.
(In September 1966, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said "I think that we've got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard." What was true regarding the Watts riots of 1965, the Detroit riots of 1967, and the nationwide riots in response to MLK's assassination in 1968, including in Washington, D.C., was still true in 2003 in Benton Harbor, MI, and can sometimes still happen today.)
The triggering event for the June 2003 "race riot" in Benton Harbor was white law enforcement officers chasing a Black youth on a motorcyle at high speed. The Black youth crashed during the pursuit, and died of his injuries.
(Law enforcement agencies in the area, such as the Berrien County Sheriff's Department, were then, and also since, infamous for targeting young Black men with fast motorcycles for traffic stops, based on nothing more than, well, their being young Black men with fast motorcycles. Consider one such incident in 2001, which I witnessed after having been arrested for a non-violent civil resistance action at the nearby Cook nuclear power plant: I shared a jail cell with a young Black man who had been pulled over while riding his fast motorcycle, for no apparent reason. When the Sheriff's deputies discovered he was carrying a relatively large amount of cash -- he had just been paid at work, and was about to deposit his pay at the bank -- they accused him of having obtained it by illegally dealing drugs, and seized his money. Although the accusation was untrue, he was convinced would not see his money again. Heartbreakingly, in their mutual shock and desperation during his phone call to her on the Berrien County jail holding cell payphone, the young Black man and his fiancée discussed simply moving away from the area, for good, as soon as possible. "We've got to get out of here," his fiancée cried.)
In response to their beloved friend's death in the high-speed chase by police in June 2003, Black male teenagers, and even younger boys, in Benton Harbor "rioted," setting fire to 13 homes in their own neighborhoods. If they had dared set foot across the St. Joe River, into 88% white, and wealthy, St. Joe, they could well have simply been shot dead, which is why they burned houses in their own neighborhoods instead. This is often the case in such "riots" nationwide, dating back many decades. The racist strife in 88% white and wealthy St. Joe/89% Black and impoverished Benton Harbor, "twin cities" separated by the narrow St. Joe River, but significantly segregated by race and wealth, has gone on for a very long time.
The 1998 book by Alex Kotlowitz, The Other Side of the River: A Story of Two Towns, a Death, and America's Dilemma, examines such troubling issues.
So Gov. Granholm held an emergency press conference the day after the Black youth's death in the high-speed police chase, and the resulting "riots" and arson. She pledged to make things right by low income, low wealth, Black majority Benton Harbor. But what ultimately happened is objectionable. As mentioned above, the vast majority Black, low income community of Benton Harbor was subjected to state takeover by an Emergency Financial Manager during Granholm's governorship, whose sole focus was to balance the budget, everything else be damned. This included the anti-democratic displacement of Benton Harbor's locally elected mayor and city council by the Emergency Financial Manager, who ruled by state authority fiat, overriding the local elected office holders. This is the kind of anti-democratic thinking that led to the drinking water catastrophe in Flint, some years later.
In addition, Benton Harbor's Lake Michigan shoreline gem, Jean Klock Park -- "dedicated to the children of all future generations" -- was partially taken away from the City of Benton Harbor. A PGA golf course was imposed upon the land, as well as a predominantly white, wealthy gated resort community. The working class Black youth of Benton Harbor could look forward to low-wage caddy and cafeteria jobs at the world-class golf course, apparently, or cleaning jobs in the gated resort community?!
It was a real injustice. And it happened on Granholm's watch as governor. Multi-millionaire Republican U.S. Rep. Fred Upton --
one of the nuclear power industry's best friends in Congress -- was also very supportive of the "economic development scheme." This is in and near the very heart of his district -- St. Joe is the heart of his power base. He is also an heir to the Whirlpool Corp. fortune. His grandfather was founder. Whirlpool has dominated Benton Harbor for over a century. And despite Whirlpool's national and even global success, Benton Harbor has remained low income, at least for its vast majority Black population.
Attorney, Terry Lodge of Toledo, OH -- who has served as legal counsel for Beyond Nuclear, Don't Waste Michigan, NIRS, et al., in countless anti-nuclear fights, over decades, often pro bono) tried to stop the takeover and destruction of Jean Klock Park, at the urging of grassroots anti-nuclear and environmental colleagues in that area. Benton Harbor is midway between the Palisades atomic reactor to the north, and Cook nuclear power plant to the south -- each about 15 miles away. But alas, an arch conservative right wing judge was ultimately assigned to hear the case, and the writing was on the walls from the start of the trial, regardless of the merits of the legal arguments. Plus, having a powerful Democratic governor in Granholm, and powerful Republican U.S. Rep., in Upton, on the other side of the fight, did not help the cause of racial, social, or environmental justice in this case.
In response to my inquiry, Terry Lodge wrote back about his experience in the Jean Klock Park case:
Your rendition of the events of privatization of Jean Klock Park are accurate. Whirlpool's subdivision was to accommodate the influx of former Maytag executives from Iowa (this all happened around the time Whirlpool acquired Maytag). The privatization resulted in 22+ acres being "leased" for 99 years from the very heart of Jean Klock Park, on which three golf holes were constructed, 80-foot high dunes were "levelled," and anchoring, non-native soils and plantings installed to hold the golf greens in place atop the dunes. In exchange, Whirlpool Foundation (which underwrote Harbor Shores, the developer of the golf course subdivision) arranged for the swap to Benton Harbor of several dozen acres of brownfields, largely sites of their former factories, located away from the lakeshore, essentially worthless from a redevelopment standpoint. From a peak population of about 25,000 in the late 1960s, Benton Harbor presently has about 10,000 inhabitants; those brownfields will never come back as anything but the crummy, contaminated mitigation lands they became.
The privatization of the Park was billed as the linchpin of a grand "renaissance" of the two towns, which has never materialized. The golf subdivision would become the heart of a transition of the Benton Harbor/St. Joe area into a "destination place," replete with boutique shops and condominium developments. Very little of it has happened, despite the economic "boom" of recent years.
Gov. Granholm was totally causative. She met with the leadership of the Whirlpool Foundation and was shown the details of the privatization. She spoke approvingly in public that the Benton Harbor park takeover was just the exciting redevelopment needed, threw state resources into the mix, and muzzled dissenting environmental voices. Her influence in silencing environmentalist opposition significantly reduced public outcry and is typical of what Democratic politicians bring to such disputes that Republicans can only wish or dream about.
The Jean Klock Park story in Benton Harbor provides background on Granholm's attitude towards environmental justice, social justice, and racial justice -- at least when it really counts, as it did beginning on that night in June 2003, when the young Black man died while being pursued at high speed by white local law enforcement.
EJ, social and racial justice certainly come into play in the nuclear power and radioactive waste realm, over which the U.S. Energy Secretary holds significant authority. As but one current example is the fight against Consolidated Interim Storage Facilities (CISFs) targeted at either side of the Texas/New Mexico state line. It is a majority Latinx region. A large number of Indigenous Nations -- Apache, Pueblo, Commanche, and other -- have historic and pre-historic connections to the two sites, which are only 40 miles apart. New Mexico is a majority minority state -- that is, the BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, specifically Latinx) population already outnumbers Whites in the "Land of Enchantment." In addition, New Mexico has already suffered disproportionatey from the hazardous radioactive pollution of the Atomic Age, as well as the fossil fuel pollution of the oil and gas industry in the Permian Basin. Of all places in the country to target for highly radioactive waste "interim storage," at high risk of becoming de facto permanent surface storage, the worst of both worlds!
Of course, the other site still being targeted is Yucca Mountain, Nevada -- Western Shoshone land -- for explicit permanent disposal. I would hope that a Biden administration Energy Secretary would kill the Yucca dump scheme once and for all, after the Obama administration cancelled the project in 2010 as "unworkable," and with the Nevada U.S. congressional delegation's help, zeroed out funding for it during the rest of his administration. This "starving of the Yucca dump beast," to paraphrase Indigenous poet John Trudell, even continued to be the case under the Trump administration, although for the first three years, Trump's DOE requested major funding, but didn't get it, because of the bipartisan NV delegation-led, but almost entirely Democratic congressional resistance.
The Jean Klock Park skeleton in Energy Seceretary-nominee Granholm's closet is significant, because environmental justice is often front and center when it comes to nuclear power and radioactive waste issues, many to most times.
Terry Lodge is also legal counsel for Don't Waste MI, et al., a seven-group, national, grassroots environmental coalition opposing both CISFs.
Further back in time, in 1999 and 2000, when Jennifer Granholm was Attorney General (AG) of Michigan, a coalition led by Don't Waste MI, with Lodge yet again as legal counsel, approached her AG office for help in our resistance to the weapons-grade MOX (plutonium-uranium Mixed Oxide nuclear fuel) program. The U.S. Lead Test Assembly (LTA) was planned to travel from Los Alamos, NM, through MI, to Chalk River Nuclear Lab in Ontario, by so-called Safe Secure Transport (a nuclear weapons capable semi truck trailer). The Russian LTA was planned to travel by air to Chalk River. Unfortunately, Granholm and her staff turned us down. She would not aid our resistance in any way.
Her answer was a far cry from her predecessor, the "Eternal General," AG Frank Kelley, so-called because he served as AG for 37 years, longer than any other state AG in the country's history. AG Kelley agreed to take on the case of Don't Waste Michigan, and the Lake Michigan Federation, in opposition to the high-risk dry cask storage of highly radioactive waste on the Lake Michigan shore at Palisades, beginning in 1993.
AG Granholm's refusal to help resist MOX in 1999-2000 foreshadowed her eight years as governor, from 2003 to 2011. Even though we fought many, very signifcant anti-nuclear (safety, health, security, and environmental protection) battles that entire time in the Great Lakes State, Gov. Granholm's administration very rarely, to never, helped us, in any way that I can remember. These fights included ones over significant reactor risks at Cook, Palisades, and Fermi. A major example is the Palisades 20-year license extension, as well as Palisades's 2007 sale from Consumers Energy to Entergy.
Another example was the years-long fight against a Canadian proposal to put radioactive waste dumps on the Lake Huron shore of Ontario, across from Michigan.
Despite Don't Waste MI and many other groups' ongoing resistance to many such schemes as cited above, throughout Granholm's 2003 to 2011 governorship, her administration mostly remained silent, at best.
As Edmund Burke said -- a quote that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., would cite -- "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
Our non-profit grassroots environmental coalition opposed to the MOX shipment through MI did our best to resist. Lodge even won a TRO (Temporary Restraining Order) against the shipment. But in the end, in Jan. 2000, the MOX shipment rolled through MI, including under likely-U.S. Marine Reservist armed guard at the Sault Ste. Marie border between Michigan and Ontario.
One of the Canadian shoreline dumps was finally stopped in late 2019, after nearly two-decades of voice in the wilderness grassroots resistance, thanks to the Saugeen Ojibwe Nation. However, another proposal targeting a site a short distance inland, but still in the Lake Huron Basin, is still in play.
Another example from Gov. Granholm's watch was the decommissioning of the Big Rock Point atomic reactor. The state government left a lot to be desired, in terms of protecting its residents and their interests, as documented at the following links:
November 30, 2006: Kevin Kamps (NIRS/Don’t Waste Michigan) press statement in opposition to “Plutonium State Park” at Big Rock Nuclear Power Plant near Charlevoix, Michigan.
November 30, 2006: Statement by Kay Drey, NIRS board of directors secretary, opposing state park at Big Rock nuclear plant in Michigan.
November 30, 2006: Statement of Michael J. Keegan, Coalition for a Nuclear Free Great Lakes, in opposition to state park at Big Rock nuclear power plant.
November 30, 2006: Coalition statement (two dozen grassroots groups) opposed to “Plutonium State Park” at Big Rock Nuclear Power Plant in Michigan
November 30, 2006: Coalition Urges Rejection of Big Rock Nuke Site Park: Numerous Michigan Natural Resource Treasures Without Nuclear Waste Would be Better Choices for Limited Trust Fund Dollars. Press release.
November 30, 2006: Say Yes to Michigan, Say No to the "Plutonium State Park"! Backgrounder on Big Rock Nuclear Power Plant.
Fortunately, by a 2-1 split decision, a state oversight board that decided funding for the development of state parks voted against several millions of dollars of initial funding for "Plutonium State Park" at Big Rock Point, a hard won victory, that will likely have to be defended in the future, as Holtec International is trying to take over the site on Lake Michigan's "Gold (albeit radioactive) Coast," from its current owner, Entergy.
But it was also on Granholm's watch as governor that a raid on Palisades' decommissioning trust fund (DTF) was allowed to go down. The Michigan Public Service Commission was the one which allowed it. This, despite the then Republican MI AG (Granholm's replacement in the office) taking on the case of major industrial electricity users, to fight the ratepayer uprates that would be built into the reactor sale agreement. But the so-called ABATE coalition of major manufacturers, represented by the MI Republican AG, got rolled. As did we, when our grassroots environmental/household ratepayer coalition again tried to resist. In the end, the Palisades' DTF was raided to the tune of $316 million -- around one-third given to the previous owner Consumers Energy, one-third to the new owner Entergy, and one-third to MI ratepayers. The latter was ironic indeed, because any shortfall in the Palisades' DTF, would likely have to be made up by MI ratepayers and/or taxpayers (most, to all, Michiganders are both ratepayers and taxpayers). As a result of the greedy corporate raid, Palisades' current DTF is just over $500 million, far short of what is truly needed to do a comprehensive radiological cleanup of the significantly contaminated site:
http://www.beyondnuclear.org/reports/
(Beyond Nuclear reactor oversight project director, Paul Gunter, devoted an entire chapter of his national report to Palisades, given its significant radioactive contamination.)
More such examples of Gov. Granholm's inaction in response to nuclear wrongdoing and risk taking could be cited.
A common theme is that Granholm, as the Great Lakes State's AG and governor, did not seem to oppose the agenda of Michigan's nuclear power utilities, such as Consumers Energy, at any turn, no matter the impact, risk, or liability to her constituents' environment, health, safety, pocketbooks, etc.
Granholm worked closely with Michigan nuclear utilities like CMS/Consumers Energy. A former CMS executive served as a campaign leader in one of Granholm's runs for governor. Another example of the revolving door is Brandon Hofmeister, who served as Gov. Granholm's energy policy advisor, and deputy legal counsel, before becoming a CMS/Consumers vice president.
Despite her lackluster record on nuclear power and radioactive waste issues, I do thank and praise Granholm for her administration's offshore wind power development plans in MI. I was fortunate to attend a June 2010 presentation by James Clift, executive director of Michigan Environmental Council at the time, a 70+ group coalition. The presentation took place at an annual Michigan renewable energy festival, held that year in Southfield. Clift was serving on an offshore wind power development advisory panel for Gov. Granholm. The panel had come up with 25 stringent siting criteria, in order to protect the environment, and more -- avoiding fish spawning grounds, avoiding sea lanes for navigation, avoiding historic shipwrecks, avoiding bird migratory routes, even addressing aesthetic impacts, etc. Their final recommendations for sites to develop offshore wind included extreme southern Lake Michigan, extreme northern Lake Michigan, and Saginaw Bay where it opens out into Lake Huron. (Clift is currently a deputy director at the MI state agency Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, EGLE.) During Granholm's governorship, a MSU institute published a study on the potential for offshore wind in the Great Lakes, showing hundreds of thousands of megawatts-electric of wind power potential to tap. Even the Granholm advisory panel's modest focus on just the three localities in the Great Lakes could have led to the development of many thousands of megawatts-electric of offshore wind power, enough to readily displace the dirty, dangerous, and expensive electricity generated by age-degraded atomic reactors on the Great Lakes shores in the Great Lakes State, for example.
Unfortunately, when Rick Snyder came in, he ended any such talk of offshore wind power development. I hope Energy Secretary Granholm will resurrect those plans -- and develop other offshore wind potential, such as along the Eastern Seaboard -- as a way to displace the dangerously age-degraded atomic reactors that line the Great Lakes shorelines, and the Atlantic Coast. Such offshore wind would generate large numbers of high paying jobs, as well as large quantities of safe, clean, affordable electricity, helping solve the climate and economic crises.
And I hope her decade+ of renewable energy advocacy is most sincere. Because nuclear power as a supposed "clean source" is a lie. What about the radiation emissions, at every stage of the uranium (or thorium, or plutonium) fuel chain? What about the high-level radioactive waste that is generated? What about the risks of major disasters, like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima?
Besides that, what about the extreme cost and very long time it would take to deploy even a small number of atomic reactors as a supposed climate solution? Nuclear power would be a complete dead end, that would waste precious time and money that the real solutions (renewables, efficiency) desperately need to get the job done, ASAP. IEER made these very arguments 14 long years ago now:
As but one example, the Summer Units 2 and 3 atomic reactors in South Carolina, cancelled when just half-built, represent a loss of more than $9 billion to South Carolina ratepayers. Just imagine how much renewable energy and energy efficiency could have been obtained with that amount of investment! Instead, it was entirely wasted, as were vital years of effort.
Beyond Nuclear and Don't Waste Michigan hosted Dr. Makhijani, President of IEER, for a several-stop book tour in MI, in late Oct. 2008, just before Barack Obama's first presidential election victory, to discuss those real, carbon-free and nuclear-free climate solutions:
Energy Secretary Granholm would be wise to heed such carbon-free, nuclear-free sagacity, as expressed by Dr. Makhijani's Michigan-wide book tour, a dozen years ago.
As long-time Big Rock Point watchdog Joanne Beemon warned a quarter-century ago, we had better abolish nuclear power before electric vehicles (EVs) come along, or we'll be very sorry. Jennifer Granholm has long advocated EVs, but they absolutely cannot be nuclear powered!
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