Florida Power and Light: wasting the Everglades one power plant at a time... by gimleteye

In its effort to site new nuclear power at Turkey Point, the corporate giant Florida Power and Light is about as responsible as AIG and its corporate officers who pulled down multi-million dollar bonuses despite taking bailout money from taxpayers.

In the case of new nuclear reactors yet unpermitted for Turkey Point, FPL is already charging rate payers: more than $100 million has been dedicated to that effort. The bottom line: the public is defenseless. Once the money is in the machine, there is no stopping corporate ambition. (please click, 'read more' and hit images to enlarge them)

The point about Turkey Point nuclear is that utilities cannot be trusted to balance the public interest. Consider the following:in an exceedingly rare public embarrassment to FPL, the senior license holder for the existing nuclear units at Turkey Point recently resigned, publicly chastizing FPL for putting the public at risk in a re-start of the nuclear facility after an inadvertent, recent shutdown.

In the Miami Herald on March 13, David Hoffman, the former license holder, writes, "FPL has chosen to continue to neglect the environment created at Turkey Point regarding the retaliatory nature of the management team in place... the behavior of FPL regarding retaliation is truly disturbing on many levels..." This public criticism of FPL by senior employees is unprecedented.

The Miami Herald gives an FPL spokesperson the main space in today's letters to the editor. The spokesperson defends his defense of FPL's plan in South MIami to string new high voltage transmission lines from the nuclear reactors up US Route 1, "We are committed to ensuring that the electrical service we provide is affordable, reliable and safe."

The 11,000 people who "live and work in the same communities as our customers" might ask their employer how safe it is to mine more than 10 million cubic yards of wetlands, with a total of over 26 million cubic yards just off Card Sound Road for its new nuclear reactors, to put them twenty feet above sea level.

According to the National Park Service, "this coastal wetland system represents the last remaining historic southeastern EVerglades, and land use decisions affecting this region will determine the fate of recovery efforts for Florida and Biscayne Bays." That's where we have committed to spend billions to 'save' the Everglades (Please read, "Paving Paradise: Florida's Vanishing Wetlands and the Failure of No Net Loss")

Environmentalists do a grave disservice to the public by kumaya'ing with this corporate giant. But the focus should not be on environmentalists who dance with the partner that brung them: it should be on contacting Governor Charlie Crist and President Obama, protesting a corporation determined to waste the Everglades, one power plant at a time.