Maine’s environmental protection board Thursday, Oct. 19 upheld a Department of Environmental Protection decision to exempt from taxes Maine Yankee’s canisters that hold spent nuclear fuel, the casks that hold them, and the pads the casks sit on.

The state board’s 7-0 vote followed a hearing of about three hours at Augusta Civic Center on Wiscasset’s appeal of the exemption. In advance documents and in the hearing – carried over Zoom where Wiscasset Newspaper viewed it – the town argued the items’ primary purpose was storage, not air pollution control; and Maine Yankee’s motivation to build the system was, it was cheaper than other options for the waste the federal government was and is eventually supposed to get out of Wiscasset. Maine Yankee countered, its aim was to comply with law and, if the facility was not about protecting the environment, the waste could have gone on a shelf in a warehouse, or been buried in a hole in the backyard, not placed in a $50 million facility.

Wiscasset’s attorney Sarah McDaniel raised the motivation issue because, she told state board members, they had to consider it depending on how they land on the items’ purpose. She said nowhere in Maine Yankee’s thousands of pages discussing its options for the waste did the company cite air pollution control.

“The facts plainly and incontrovertibly show that air pollution control played no part whatsoever in Maine Yankee’s decision to move its fuel out of the wet storage pool ... and into this dry storage system,” McDaniel said. Air pollution control’s absence in company documents “is so important and so telling,” she said.

Maine Yankee’s lawyer Brian Rayback told the board the pool option is safe and legal, but “not quite as safe” as the canisters and casks the company went with. 

Rayback disputed the town’s claim the system’s primary purpose is storage. It is about safe storage, he said. “If all one really cared about were storing something, you’d just set it down and then store it ... That’s obviously not the case. The primary challenge to store spent nuclear fuel rods safely is keeping the radionuclides confined ... even if (the container) is struck by a truck and the truck explodes,” or by a flood, tornado, earthquake, or plane, he said. 

“That degree of protection is not just about storage,” Rayback said.

Maine Yankee’s and Wiscasset’s longtime deal on what the former nuclear plant pays has run out and the company March 31 got DEP Commissioner Melanie Loyzim’s OK to exempt the canisters and other items.

Deliberating on Wiscasset’s appeal of the exemption, some board members wished state law had given them more specific guidance. This forced the board to look at legal decisions that “don’t reference the same kind of facility that we’re talking about ...,” Chair Susan Lessard said.

“However ... at the end of the day, the primary purpose of the facility is the safe storage to control pollution at Maine Yankee,” Lessard said. 

“We are very disappointed in Maine Board of Environmental Protection’s unanimous decision to uphold the DEP commissioner’s granting of an air pollution control certificate for a major portion of Maine Yankee’s taxable property in Wiscasset,” Town Manager Dennis Simmons told Wiscasset Newspaper in an e-mail response to questions post-hearing. “During their testimony today, Maine Yankee stated that they are willing to pay a ‘fair’ share of taxes to the town. Obtaining a property tax exemption for over 90% of the taxable value of the property hardly fits the definition of fair. At this time the selectboard will need to meet with the town’s attorney and consider the next steps, such as appealing the BEP decision to Superior Court.”

Also responding to a request for comment, Maine Yankee Spokesman Eric Howes said via email: “Maine Yankee is pleased that the Board of Environmental Protection today affirmed the Department of Environmental Protection’s March 31 certification that portions of the Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation qualify as an air pollution control facility under Maine statute.”