PROVINCETOWN — A 21-year-old North Atlantic right whale known as Porcia was observed in Cape Cod Bay on March 18. The whale was seen swimming with her 2023 calf by her side. And last week, before this first mother-calf pair of the season was spotted, Scott Landry, director of the disentanglement team at the Center for Coastal Studies, estimated there were already between 30 and 40 right whales in the bay.
cape cod bay
RADIOACTIVITY
EPA: Holtec Sows ‘Public Confusion’
Agency chastises Pilgrim’s owner for statements on dumping water into Cape Cod Bay
PLYMOUTH — An Environmental Protection Agency official criticized Holtec International last week for misleading the public about its proposed dumping of radioactive water from the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station into Cape Cod Bay.
RADIOACTIVE QUESTIONS
Attorney General: Dumping Pilgrim Water Is Prohibited
The water has not yet been tested for possible contaminants
Editor’s note: After this week’s Independent went to press, Mass. Attorney General Maura Healey’s office issued a statement about the release of radioactive water into Cape Cod Bay. The report below has been updated to include that late-breaking development.
PLYMOUTH — No one knows yet which radionuclides and other contaminants are in the million gallons of radioactive water that Holtec International has proposed dumping into Cape Cod Bay in decommissioning the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station.
That lack of knowledge seemed to make it impossible for state and federal health and water quality agencies to say what authority they might have to prevent the release.
But on Wednesday, Feb. 2 at 4 p.m., a statement from state Attorney General Maura Healey’s office said release of the water was prohibited.
“The facility’s permits prohibit the discharge of spent fuel pool water and wastewater generated by the decommissioning process into Cape Cod Bay and we expect Holtec to abide by those rules,” said Chloe Gotsis on behalf of Healey. “Our office will continue to coordinate with state agencies to ensure that public health, safety, and the environment are protected during ongoing activities at Pilgrim.”
Before Gotsis’s statement, discussion of who would have authority over the proposed dumping focused on potential contaminants other than radioactivity in the water. The water has not yet been tested because some of it is still being used as “shielding.” Highly radioactive reactor components are kept under water while they are being segmented and put into containers to protect workers.
More than 100 people tuned in to a remote Jan. 31 meeting of the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel (NDCAP). Most were hoping for some assurance that there would be no release of radioactive water into the bay.
There was no such assurance at the meeting.
The NDCAP comprises representatives of state agencies, local officials, and a handful of citizens. Its job is to help oversee decommissioning: keeping the public informed and offering advice on how the job should be done.
The panel learned at its last meeting in November that Holtec International, which owns and is decommissioning Pilgrim, was considering a few options for getting rid of 1 million gallons of radioactive water from the spent fuel pool, the reactor cavity, and other plant systems.
Releasing the water into Cape Cod Bay in batches of 20,000 gallons is one option. Others include evaporation — where it goes up into the clouds and comes back down in the rain — and trucking it offsite to a disposal facility.
When news of the potential dumping became public, protests led Holtec to pledge not to release any of the water into the bay in 2022.
The fishing community has been vocal in its opposition.
“The livelihood of so many, providing nourishment to so many more, might forever be lost,” said Mark Cristoforo, executive director of the Mass. Seafood Collaborative, during a “speak out” event before the NDCAP meeting. Fishermen’s livelihoods would be “sacrificed on the altars of greed,” he said.
State Sen. Susan Moran, a Falmouth Democrat who is leading a legislative effort to block the dumping, said legislators had met with state officials to discuss what could be done. They plan to meet again in March.
The state attorney general and Holtec signed an agreement in 2020 with a long list of requirements. But it’s not clear whether the agreement gives the state authority to regulate the release of the water.
Legislators have also filed emergency bills in both the state House and Senate to prohibit the discharge of radioactive material into coastal or inland waters. Violators would face “steep fines,” Moran said.
“We will never allow the dumping of radioactive material in Cape Cod Bay,” she said.
Jack Priest, director of the radiation control program for the Dept. of Public Health and an NDCAP member, expressed frustration over the lack of information.
“It would be useful to have more facts,” he said. “We haven’t even seen what’s in the water. Are there other contaminants?”
The state’s water discharge permit for the nuclear plant, called the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, regulates an array of contaminants. The state Dept. of Environmental Protection and federal EPA can stop the release of the water into the bay if it contains contamination levels that exceed those allowed in the permit. But the permit does not regulate radioactive contamination, which is under the authority of the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
Priest also complained that Holtec seems to have dismissed the option of trucking the water to a disposal location.
“If you’re evaporating the water filtered from the stack, it eventually makes its way to the ground wherever the cloud floats to,” he said. “Or you’re doing a liquid dump into the bay. Both are lousy choices.”
David Noyes, senior compliance manager for a Holtec affiliate, assured Priest that trucking remains on the table.
But it’s been made clear by Holtec Decommissioning International’s president Kelly Trice that the company strongly favors discharging the water into the bay.
In a public statement last week, Trice cited the potential for accident inherent in trucking the water to a disposal facility. Evaporation, he said, would require large quantities of electricity and possibly the use of a diesel generator to produce heat. While hundreds of thousands of gallons of effluent have been evaporated over the last couple of years, the heat source was the pool where the spent fuel assemblies from nearly five decades of operation were stored. That fuel has been moved into massive steel and concrete casks.
Mary Lampert, an NDCAP member and director of an activist group called Pilgrim Watch, questioned Holtec’s safety concerns related to trucking. “Holtec wishes to have an interim waste storage site and have spent fuel trucked from all over the country, and they have no problem with transportation,” she said. Holtec expects to have a license for its planned storage facility in New Mexico approved by the NRC sometime this month.
Lampert tried to have NDCAP resume a monthly meeting schedule rather than every two months, but she failed to get her motion seconded. The next meeting will be at the end of March.
The NRC is scheduled to attend that meeting. NDCAP co-chair Pine duBois said a representative from the EPA would also attend. Lampert said Seth Schofield, senior appellate counsel for the attorney general, should be invited. Schofield was instrumental in hammering out the settlement agreement with Holtec. Lampert said Schofield could clarify “what specific authority the state has.”
Another panel member suggested asking a scientist from Woods Hole to attend, citing comments senior scientist and oceanographer Irina Rypina made in the Independent last week. Rypina said that contaminated water would be trapped in the bay rather than filtering quickly into the ocean because the shape of the land creates a semi-enclosed space. “A tracer released into Cape Cod Bay would recirculate and stay in the waters within the bay for a long time,” Rypina said. “And then will likely end up in the sediment on the ocean floor or on the beaches inside the bay.” The same thing would happen to the radionuclides in the water released from Pilgrim, she said.
ENVIRONMENT
Math Looks Bad for Right Whales
With females dying at higher rates and fewer births, hope for species dims
PROVINCETOWN — Dragon, a female right whale who gave birth to a calf as recently as 2016, was spotted two weeks ago entangled in rope 50 miles south of Nantucket. She was malnourished and underweight, likely because the entanglement was preventing her from feeding.
This might be the last we see of Dragon. Because she has lost so much blubber, she will likely sink, rather than float, when she dies. That’s a problem for scientists, because whale cadavers can help them determine the cause of death, update mortality statistics, and identify the source of the entangling gear.
Center for Coastal Studies scientist Stormy Mayo said that Dragon’s plight is part of a larger trend: female right whales are dying at a higher rate than males. With fewer females to produce babies, the chances of a future for the species are reduced.
“The numbers of calves over the past five years has been very low, and the mortalities have been very high,” Mayo said. Although the number of calves this year — 10 were spotted off Florida last month — is “wonderfully higher than the past four years, it’s not enough.”
Richard Pace, a wildlife biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, estimates that 133 right whales died between 2010 and 2017, or about 19 animals each year. But only 39 carcasses were found, as the remaining 94 sank before being spotted. During the same time period, 115 calves, or about 16 per year, were born, resulting in a higher mortality than birth rate.
Because only 50 percent of calves reach adulthood, Pace estimates that at least 30 births would be needed this year to compensate for deaths.
Changing Patterns
Scientists understand right whale deaths better than they do reproduction. “There are lots of gaps,” said Mayo. “The animals are roaming bodies of water, areas out in the ocean that we just don’t know about.”
What is known is that female whales typically migrate to warmer waters in Florida and Georgia to give birth. Their calves need three weeks to grow enough blubber to survive the colder northern waters. Afterwards, the pair begins the journey to Cape Cod and as far north as Nova Scotia, where plentiful food can be found in spring and summer.
It is this reproductive migration that puts female right whales at greater risk than males. As they travel from Canada to Florida and back, the chances they’ll come into the path of fishing boats and gear are higher.
One of the calves born this year has already suffered a major injury from being hit by a boat. Mayo is concerned that the calf cannot form a seal to nurse milk from its mother, and its recovery, like Dragon’s, is unlikely.
Cape Cod Bay is a seasonal home for right whales. Mayo estimates that at least 278 animals, or 65 percent of the North Atlantic population, were in the bay last spring, and dozens have already returned this season. They’re easily spotted from Herring Cove and Race Point.
But these patterns are changing.
Reproduction has dropped in recent years. Healthy female right whales should give birth every three years, but the current average is every six or seven years, Pace said. Scientists don’t know why that is so, but say it is likely due to nutritional and other stresses. The result, though, is clear: fewer births.
Bigger mammals, like right whales or elephants, tend to reproduce less frequently than smaller mammals because of their longer life spans, Pace said. Right whales typically lived well over 60 years, but these days their life expectancy is closer to 40 years with increased mortality from boat strikes and entanglements in fishing gear. With female right whales dying at a rate of 5 percent per year, Pace said, they are not living long enough to replace themselves.
Complicating scientists’ abilities to understand whale behavior, the geographic distribution of right whales is changing with the climate crisis.
For example, right whales typically eat copepods, tiny crustaceans swimming in the ocean. In the past, these could be found near Nova Scotia and the Gulf of Maine, carried in by ocean currents. Those currents have slowed because of warming, however, and right whales are moving elsewhere to find food. Recently, whales have been spotted south of Nantucket and near George’s Bank instead of farther north.
economy
Trump’s Trade War Affects Local Lobster Market
Canada moves into the market void
EASTHAM — The trade war with China is reshaping East Coast lobster sales. Whether local lobstermen feel the burn depends, for now, on where they’re fishing. But with Canada stepping up exports, industry workers worry the tariffs’ negative effects will be long lasting.
Wholesalers, whose work involves opening markets, have had sales and margins plummet this past year.
“The tariffs hit us really hard,” said Alex Hay, president of Wellfleet Shellfish Co. The company does not sell directly to China, Hay said, but to exporters like Boston Lobster Co., whose website has a page entirely in Mandarin. Hay said that his company has been building relationships with customers who export to China for a decade, and the trade war has put a dent in their business infrastructure.
Boston Lobster Co. has been forced to diversify its export market as demand from China has dropped precipitously. Sales agent Brent Lincoln said that 70 percent of his shipments were destined for China before the trade war began. Now, Boston Lobster has started sending lobster to Vietnam, Korea, and domestic markets.
“Nothing’s going to China anymore,” Lincoln told the Independent. “The only place you can ship to is Hong Kong, and even that has slowed down.”
Farther up the coast, Intershell International, a Gloucester-based wholesaler that exports to China, has also seen lobster sales fall by $3 million to $4 million this year, according to owner Monty Rome.
Rome pointed out that, while the federal government has doled out billions in relief for agribusiness, the fishing industry has received nothing. “Farmers and fishermen are very much alike — we’re feeding people,” Rome said. “They gave so much money to farmers, but we didn’t get anything.”
Canada is increasingly filling the void left by the U.S. With a large quantity of lobsters stuck in the supply chain during peak season, Canadian dealers were able to buy and sell cheap to China, Hay explained.
Bay Lobsters Too Small for Export
Not all lobsters are equally affected by the trade war. In China, size matters.
Asked to speculate on why Chinese demand for lobsters has grown in recent years, Hay said that large lobsters have “become a status symbol in China. If you can buy a big lobster, it means you’re wealthy.”
His company primarily deals in 2-to-4-pound lobsters caught in ocean waters, which are large enough to meet Chinese demand. These large lobsters used to be loaded into freighter jets and sent fresh to China.
Lobstermen fishing in Cape Cod Bay, however, typically harvest smaller lobsters that weigh in under 2 pounds.
With so many lobsters available in the domestic market, local lobstermen have been braced for prices to go down. But that hasn’t happened yet.
Lobsterman Michael Milewski, who lives in Truro but fishes out of Provincetown, expected lobster prices to fall after the last round of tariffs but said he was surprised to find that prices have stayed up. Wellfleet lobster fisherman Damian Parkington said that his prices were actually higher this year than usual.
The reasons for that counterintuitive outcome appear to be environmental.
As the Independent recently reported, a huge lobster die-off took place in Cape Cod Bay this fall due to extremely low oxygen levels in the water, resulting in low lobster stocks this season. The limited stock led to a boost in price, Parkington said.
According to a 2015 U.S. Dept. of Agriculture report, after Russia, the U.S. is the largest exporter of fish and seafood to China.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the number of lobsters exported to China quickly grew over the last decade, reaching over 8 million kilograms and $148 million in 2018. Total lobster exports to China have fallen to just over 1.5 million kilograms and $27 million in 2019.
The trade war follows escalating tensions between American and Chinese leaders. In July 2018 China levied a 25-percent tariff on U.S. seafood imports in response to the Trump administration’s imposing an equal tariff. Then, on Aug. 1, 2019, the Trump administration announced a further 10-percent tariff on Chinese goods. China responded by halting all imports of U.S. agricultural products on Aug. 5, 2019 and imposed a 10-percent retaliatory tariff.
Canada May Dominate Market
Despite recent hope that the trade war is almost over, lobster industry workers are concerned its negative effects will linger after the tariffs are lifted.
With Canada swooping in to fill the void left in the market, returning to the status quo will not be easy.
“They’re trying to take over the market,” said Lincoln of Boston Lobster Co.
“It seems like they’ve been putting in the groundwork to do shipping only out of [Canada],” he said, adding that Canadian companies are using huge freighter jets to deliver hundreds of thousands of pounds to China each week.
As Canada tightens its hold on exporting Eastern Seaboard lobster to China, U.S. exporters will face difficulty when reentering the market after the tariffs are lifted.
“Once those markets are gone, it’s hard to get the buyers back,” Milewski said.
