A few weeks ago, I committed a cardinal sin – I didn’t call my mother on her Birthday. I was travelling with my family so I was rushing around packing, saying goodbye, trying to get to the airport and once we got back to DC, I was trying to get my very cranky kids home for bed.  About once every hour, I would say to myself or to the nearest person in the vicinity, “I need to call my Mom.”  In the end, I ran out of time.  I didn’t have my priorities straight.  I should’ve made time for my Mom. 

In politics, I deal with a lot of people who don’t have their priorities straight.  Folks get so involved with the “chess game” associated with passing laws; they forget why these laws are needed.  They oppose proposals based on technicalities or they just completely start to lie when faced with the prospect of losing.  The list of good bills that have died a slow and painful death due to misplaced priorities and trickery is a long one. One proposal that is currently at risk would clean up uranium enrichment facilities in Appalachia.   

In the 60s, the feds and the nuclear industry made a deal.  The government had a few underutilized uranium enrichment facilities from the WWII era. The nuclear folks were looking for a cheaper way to generate energy. It seemed like a good idea to let the nuclear industry use these plants. Everyone agreed that they would need to help the government clean up the sites later but no one had the forethought to actually require that the companies put something in the bank to make that happen.  Flash forward to 1992, Congress tells the nuclear industry that they need to join the government and pay for about 30% of the cleanup of these sites.  The industry complied and has been making payments for the last 15 years. 

There are very few laws on the books that live on forever.  Congress likes to revisit most laws every so often to make sure that they are working.  So, this cleanup requirement is up for review right now and the industry is suddenly out there saying they don’t want to pay anymore.  Ridiculous!  The nuclear waste that they helped generate is still polluting these communities.  The Department of Energy has said that it will take at least $11 BILLION more to decontaminate these facilities and that it will take until at least 2040 to get the job done.  Still, the nuclear industry is trying to wipe their hands of these towns and the people who will pay for their pollution. 

But, here is where it gets complicated.  To date, most of Congress has been disinterested in hearing the industry whine about cleaning up their mess.  So now the nuclear industry is making up stories about how people in CALIFORNIA are trying to steal the money that is meant to clean up these facilities. It is true that there has been talk about combining lots of bills into a giant package in order to overcome political and procedural huddles in Congress but come on – NRDC (and quite frankly, the bill's champion, Senator Sherrod Brown) is never, ever going to advocate selling out one community’s health and environment in order to help another.  Bundling bills is a practice that happens every day in Congress.  I guess desperate times call for desperate measures and these guys are just making it up as they go along.  Unfortunately, if folks in Congress listen to these mistruths, these Appalachian communities are going to be left holding this radioactive bag. 

It is time for all of us to get our priorities straight.  If the nuclear guys want to be part of our energy future, they need to compete in the market; they need to obey the law, and the need to always clean up the messes that they leave behind.  Just like I should’ve stopped rushing around and called my mother on her Birthday, it is time for these guys to stop playing games and start keeping the commitments that were made decades ago to the government and these communities.   

Have a good weekend… and Mom, I am sorry.