The Shumlin administration said on Thursday it is reviewing what role, if any, it might play in a complaint filed in Vermont Supreme Court against Entergy, the Louisiana-based owner of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant.
On Tuesday, the Brattleboro-based New England Coalition requested that the state’s highest court issue an injunction prohibiting Vermont Yankee from continuing to operate until it is issued a new certificate of public good or an amended permit by the state’s Public Service Board, a quasi-judicial body that regulates utilities.
The coalition’s primary fodder for this case stemmed from a board order issued last week, when the board denied Entergy’s motion to amend its previous sale order, dry fuel storage order and certificate of public good.
The dry fuel storage order banned the plant from storing spent fuel on the site generated after March 21, when the state’s permits for Vermont Yankee expired. The sales order prohibited the continued operation of the plant beyond that date without the board’s approval.
Since Entergy failed to follow these orders and the board won’t amend them, the coalition is requesting that the Supreme Court enforce the orders in accordance with Vermont statute.
Chapter 15 of Title 30 states: “A party to an order or decree of the public service board or the board itself, or both, may complain to the supreme court for relief against any disobedience of or noncompliance with such order or decree.”
The coalition argues that it was a party in the board’s review of Entergy’s permit application, pointing to such recognition in Public Service Board Docket 6545.
Shumlin administration officials say that they have not been able to find any such record of the Vermont Supreme Court being called on to enforce a board order since the Public Service Board was created.
When the Public Service Board and the Department of Public Service were one entity, called the Public Service Commission, then Deputy Attorney General Clifton Parker took a case to the Supreme Court to enforce a commission order.
That dispute began in the early 1940s when one J.A. Parker stopped supplying water to Waterbury’s “Mr. and Mrs. Roland McNeil and Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Post,” as the record reads.
“Thereupon the commission ordered the respondent to forthwith furnish to such families such supply of water as had been furnished to them prior to September 23, 1941,” reads the Supreme Court decision. “He (being J.A. Parker) should forthwith cause the pipe lines and other appliances necessary to bring such supply of water to the buildings of these families to be repaired, replaced and maintained in such a manner that the supply will be available at all times.”
In the end, the court sided with the commission.
Roughly seven decades later, on the fifth floor of the state’s Pavilion Building, just down the hall from Gov. Peter Shumlin’s office, the governor and his staff made it clear at a Thursday press conference that they support the Public Service Board’s decision last week.
Elizabeth Miller, commissioner of the Department of Public Service and Shumlin’s soon-to-be chief of staff, said that she and other officials are reviewing the case brought by the New England Coalition. It is her department’s role to represent the public’s interest in matters concerning energy, water and telecommunications.
“I think it’s an interesting avenue for them to have taken,” Miller said about the coalition’s complaint. “That’s why we’re taking a look at it — to determine what the state’s role in that proceeding, if any, should be.”
The court and Entergy are also reviewing the complaint.
