Dennett for Attorney General Campaign Video
Unleashing a barrage of hard-hitting radio ads across the state, Attorney General candidate Charlotte Dennett has taken her opponent Bill Sorrell to task for a string of what she says are improper dealings with Yankee, including advice 2 years ago to the Dept. of Public Health to avoid hearings on a 20% radiation increase, Sorrrell's defense of that radiation increase based on a discredited study paid for by Entergy, Yankee's owner, and entering into a confidentiality agreement with Entergy as a part of a criminal investigation of false statements made by Entergy concerning buried pipes now discovered to be leaking tritium and other radioactive substances.
As well, Dennett has accused both Sorrell and the VT Dept. of Public Health (VDPH) of hiding alarming rates of three radiation-linked cancers in VT, include childhood cancers. Dennett has produced internal data not released by the VDPH on women's thyroid cancer, as well as Centers for Disease Control (CDC) data on pediatric cancer and skin cancer, three of the six types of cancer associated with ionizing radiation damage, according to the American Cancer Society. The other types are stomach, lung, and breast. Dennett stresses that, although there is no way to establish a direct correlation between the cancers and VT Yankee particle contamination, the presence of not just one but three out of six radiation-induced cancers should seal the fate VT Yankee.
Regarding his alleged help for and defense of the 20% radiation increase which came to light in 2008, Dennett wrote in a 2009 Times-Argus piece (reprinted here in ChelseaGreen.com):
“This past year, Vermonters learned that the Health Department had failed to contact (as required by law) the Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules about a change in the way it evaluated low level radiation emissions at the plant. By avoiding the Rules Committee, VDPH also avoided public hearings. Had the hearings occurred, an important issue of public health would have emerged: Once the plant increased its power output (beginning in 2006) by 20 percent, radiation levels at the plant's fence line also increased, surpassing acceptable legal limits…
When public hearings finally occurred last fall, the Rules Committee asked Dr. William Irwin of VDPH: “Who advised you not to contact us?” His response was barely audible: “Counsel.””
Dennett says both Dr. Irwin and Assistant Attorney General Dixie Henry confirmed that “counsel” referred to Bill Sorrell, and also refered reporter to the office of State Senator Mark MacDonald, who told Dennett:
“If you’re going to investigate employees of Entergy for not being truthful with the public, you should also investigate their regulators because they have not been forthcoming and are part of a pattern of knowledge not being shared.”
Dennett has since filed a public records request for communications between the VDPH, Entergy, and Sorrell's office regarding hearings on the radiation increase.
In a debate on VT Public Radio last month, Sorrell explained that he believed the absence of hearings for the 20% radiation increase to be proper because “the Department of Public Health spent $150,000 for an organization to come up with a conversion factor” which, Sorrell said, distinguished between different definitions of radiation and allowed an adjustment to radiation readings. However, the methodology adopted by the study on the conversion factor was officially withdrawn by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) in 2001. Moreover, Dennett discovered through a public records request that the study had actually been paid for by Entergy, Yankee's owner, through a reimbursement to the VDPH of the $150,000 paid for the study. The study was performed by Oak Ridge Associates, a research group with close ties to the nuclear industry.
The confidentiality agreement between Sorrell and Entergy came to light in an article in Seven Days, when journalist Shay Totten reported that since “the report is covered by a confidentiality agreement signed by Sorrell, he refuses to release it publicly.” Sorrell also refused a public records request for the report made by the Conservation Law Foundation [CLF]. The Foundation eventually forced the Vermont Public Service Board to release the report after Entergy failed in its bid to have a court order to suppress it.
In the same VPR debate, Sorrell denied Entergy’s report was ever covered by the confidentiality agreement, a direct contradiction of what he told Totten of Seven Days. “There was never an agreement on our part not to release the investigative report,” he said. Dennett is filing a public records request for the confidentiality agreement to find out what exactly it covered.
The Dennett Campaign has composed a presentation “What is VDPH Hiding?” outlining the ways in which three cancers with links to radiation have been dismissed and underplayed by the VDPH and Attorney General Sorrell. In the VPR last month Sorrell said that, with respect to cancers relative to the rest of the country, Vt does “not have a bad story to tell.” But in three types of cancer which have been found to have strong links to nuclear radiation, according to the American Cancer Society, VT is high. In skin cancer VT is number one in the nation. In thyroid cancer, women in VT have experienced a 400% increase in the years from 1996 to 2005, twice the national rate of increase among women overall. In pediatric cancer (cancer of all types in children ages 0-19,) VT is number one in data combined from 1999 to 2005.
The Dennett campaign found that the data on womens' thyroid cancer was being withheld by the VDPH from the public, when a VT nurse leaked the document with the data to the Dennett campaign.
The presentation “What is VDPH Hiding?” highlights ways in which cancer rates are mistated by, in the case of thyroid, combining men and women's data, when in fact much grimmer picture emerges when the data for women alone is examined.