House and Senate negotiators approved a state energy bill late Sunday that establishes a panel comprising state energy experts, legislators, local officials and area citizens who will offer input on the decommissioning of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, which is scheduled to shut down in June 2019.

While overall reaction to the establishment of an advisory panel to deal with Entergy Corp., Pilgrim's owner, was positive, not everyone was satisfied with the list of members who will serve on the panel.

The bill now awaits Gov.
Charlie Baker's signature.

State Rep.
Sarah Peake, a Provincetown Democrat who has been instrumental in keeping the proposal alive in the House while her counterparts Vinny deMacedo, R-Plymouth, and
Daniel Wolf, D-Harwich, have done the same in the Senate, called the success of the so-called Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Council as part of the energy bill "a happy moment."

"It's a big win for the people of Massachusetts," Peake said Monday. "This committee can make sure that public safety concerns are addressed and financial concerns are addressed. Issues like air monitoring and emergency planning will also be addressed by this committee."

DeMacedo said the advisory panel will be a great help to the southeast region. "From our conversations with people from Vermont, who are going through the same decommissioning process a little before us, they shared that this was an important way to keep the public informed of the process and its complexities," the senator said.

Vermont's legislators established a similar panel in 2014, six months before
Vermont Yankee permanently shut down. The group has been working with Entergy Corp., owner of both Pilgrim and
Vermont Yankee, on Yankee's decommissioning.

"This is a very important step toward having some say into the kind of decommissioning that happens," said
Janet Azarovitz, a Falmouth resident and member of the Pilgrim Legislative Advisory Coalition.

The decommissioning advisory council will include members from state and local government, science and health experts, appointed citizens, Entergy representatives and a present or former employee of the Pilgrim plant.

The committee's composition in the original version of the bill also included citizen members who lived in the 10-mile emergency planning zone around the plant but not in Plymouth, as well as representation from Barnstable County. Those members were not included in the version approved by the House and Senate negotiators Sunday, which concerned Wolf.

"It gives Cape Cod less of a voice and the corporation more of a voice," Wolf said Monday. "It also gives less of a voice to the citizens of the Commonwealth because the Attorney General isn't on it. I'm a little perplexed as to why they changed the committee's composition. A lot of thought had gone into who should be on it."

Mary Lampert, director of the watchdog group Pilgrim Watch, called the decommissioning of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station "the largest deconstruction process that the Commonwealth has ever faced."

Vermont Yankee has been placed in SafStor, a federally approved option whereby plants are essentially mothballed for up to 60 years while money to fully dismantle them and clean up their sites is accumulating.

Entergy has said Pilgrim will likely be placed in SafStor as well, which would put the full decommissioning date at 2079.

"It will impact public health, safety, the environment (especially Cape Cod Bay) and our pocketbooks," Lampert said. "Therefore it is important that pertinent members of the administration have a voice to look out for the Commonwealth's interests."

Lampert said she trusted that the Governor and Legislature will appoint members to the committee who live in towns surrounding Plymouth and on Cape Cod. "It is essential that communities affected by nuclear facilities have the ability to participate in matters that affect them," Lampert said.

Diane Turco, co-founder and director of the Cape Downwinders, gave the establishment of a council a mixed review.

"Public inclusion in an advisory capacity on the decommissioning process at Pilgrim is a big win for stakeholders," Turco said. "The council must also include representatives from Barnstable County, a component of the original bill which was removed from the final version."

-- Follow
Christine Legere on Twitter: @chrislegereCCT.

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