Columns

New plant to provide pain without the gain

By GREG HAMILTON
Published December 17, 2006

Citrus County just missed out on getting nuked again. Darn our bad luck.

Progress Energy has at long last announced its choice of location for a second nuclear plant, and Citrus was jilted. Instead, the reactor and all of its related infrastructure - and huge property tax windfalls - will go across the border and up U.S. 19 to Levy County, if a dozen or so layers of governmental overseers approve.

Maybe it was nostalgia. Levy County today looks a lot like Citrus County did in the 1970s, when the first reactor, the coal plants and the iconic hourglass-shaped cooling tower rose from the woods west of U.S. 19.

Florida Power was in control back then, but now a group from the Carolinas runs the energy-generating show. Maybe it thinks Levy has better barbecue joints than we do.

Some Citrus officials in government and in business are trying valiantly to put a positive spin on this announcement, but it's a tough sell.

Whether you are pro or con nuclear power, whether you think all nuke plants should be shuttered or that there should be one on every corner, there is no denying the positive economic impact that the plant we have has on Citrus County. A second one would have meant even more gravy.

The energy complex outside Crystal River has been the biggest payer of taxes in Citrus for three decades. You grumble about your tax bill? Try writing one for, say, $30-million each year.

Of course, if you are a Progress Energy customer, you pay that bill, too. So do tens of thousands of other customers throughout Central Florida.

But the river of gold has flowed into Citrus County's public budgets for years, taking an enormous financial burden off the rest of us. Imagine what the millage rate would have to be to pay for the services that we have come to expect.

Levy County residents will see those benefits. Those lucky ducks.

In recent years, Progress Energy's proportion of the overall county tax roll has been slipping, and it now makes up about 15 percent. That's still a lot, but it is down from the days when the complex accounted for about a third of all tax revenue. With improvements to the aging coal plants and other facilities planned for the coming years, the value of the properties, and thus the tax bill, will rise again, which should bring the smiles back to the county budget spenders.

This property tax revenue bonanza, however, has strings attached. It is the benefit that Citrus County has received in exchange for accepting the biggest risks.

Sure, the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl disasters were anomalies, the most-cited examples of what can go wrong with nuclear power. But they did happen, and the people living closest to the sites took the hits. If anything were to go wrong at the plant in Crystal River, Citrus County would be in the bull's-eye.

Of course, those kinds of crises would never happen at the Crystal River plant - except for those times when they did.

On Feb. 26, 1980, 43,000 gallons of radioactive water spilled into the unit's containment building. If this sounds vaguely familiar, it's because that is exactly what took place the year before at Three Mile Island. Both plants were designed by the same company, Babcock and Wilcox.

Then, on Oct. 14, 1982, another leak occurred, this one with 1,700 gallons of radioactive water. Again, it was contained on site.

Other than a handful of emergency shutdowns and other situations, the nuke plant has been a decent enough neighbor over the years. Sure, officials are storing a small mountain of highly radioactive spent fuel rods on site, but it is the high-tech equivalent of the guy down the street with the leaking Chevrolet in the side yard. Not much we can do about it.

Then there are the coal plants, with their millions of tons of pollutants pouring out of the stacks and into our lungs and drinking water. It's best not to think about that.

But, again, it is all part of a devil's bargain. We live with these health risks in exchange for the power company's huge contributions to our tax base.

Now, with the new nuke plant seemingly headed to Levy, we in Citrus will get double the risks without the rewards. Hardly seems fair.

There will be upward of 2,000 people needed to construct the facility, estimated to open in 2016, so there might be jobs available for our residents. Once the plant goes operational, some of the expected 500 or so highly paid workers might choose to live in Citrus County.

Or Marion County. Or Alachua County. Or Levy County. Local real estate people, as well as school officials and chamber of commerce types, would be wise to start devising their sales pitches today.

Progress Energy officials cited logistical concerns for choosing not to put a second nuclear facility next to its cousin in Crystal River. They clearly know more than anyone about these concerns, but does it really make sense to reinvent the wheel only 8 or so miles away?

The officials cited severe storms and tidal surges as factors, but if, say, Hurricane Katrina were to sweep ashore in Crystal River, it would slap the plant up the road just as hard.

They also noted the threat of a terrorist attack on the plant. While that is a distinct possibility, and the Crystal River plant tops law enforcement's list of potential targets in the Tampa Bay region, these same officials just months ago derided those concerns, boasting of the ironclad security at their plant.

Citrus also will feel the environmental impacts of the new plant without much payback. Progress Energy expects to draw 25-million gallons of water each day from the Cross Florida Barge Canal to spin the turbines. This water, less a few million gallons that will evaporate, eventually will return to the canal. It will not be radioactive, but it will be hot.

How will this affect the ecology of the canal? The estuary it feeds? The manatees that sometimes meander up the canal?

How will the pipelines that will be needed for the plant impact the wells that people nearby use for drinking water?

Where will the enormous towers for the transmission lines go? How about the railroad spur that presumably will be needed for the trains that bring the new fuel to the site during refueling outages?

Citrus County recently settled a lawsuit and approved a housing development along the Withlacoochee River. Other projects, including a major residential and commercial proposal by Dixie Hollins, are envisioned for the area. Will the new plant scuttle those projects and more, because there is a 5-mile zone around nuclear facilities in which building is not allowed?

There is a long way to go before anyone breaks ground on the new plant, time enough for the people involved to provide answers to some of these questions.

What is clear, though, is that Citrus County tried hard to woo the coy Carolinians into renewing their vows with us, but we were left at the altar.

For better or worse.

[Last modified December 17, 2006, 01:23:34]