Evacuation plans to get another look

CORTLANDT MANOR — Officials from the towns surrounding the Indian Point nuclear power complex, after meeting with Department of Homeland Security representatives earlier this month, said they were confident the federal government would fully reevaluate the area’s emergency evacuation plans. Rep. Sue Kelly, R-N.Y., who arranged the meeting, said she left the get-together with the impression that federal authorities would even consider whether any plan could work. “They are going to give every idea a strong look,” she said. Officials from Orange, Rockland and Westchester counties gathered in Cortlandt Manor to express their concerns about the plans to Homeland Security representatives, led by Assistant Secretary Robert Stefan. “Homeland Security heard us loud and clear,” said Larry Schwartz, the deputy Westchester County executive. “They’re not going to make policy in Washington. They’re going to make it here.” Officials need “to be here and see rush hour. See when it rains two inches in an hour and the Saw Mill, Hutchinson River and Bronx River parkways flood. When there’s high winds and the Tappan Zee (bridge) is closed,” he continued. Kelly said terrorism was specifically discussed. Stefan would not take questions after the meeting but said Homeland Security would work to find “what the gaps are” in the evacuation plans. He promised more meetings. Since the 2001 terrorist attacks, many residents and officials in the lower Hudson Valley have called for a shutdown of the two Indian Point plants in Buchanan, 35 miles north of midtown Manhattan. They say the plants are an attractive target and the region is too densely populated to be safely evacuated after an attack. In 2002, former Federal Emergency Management Agency head James Lee Witt, acting as a consultant, found that Indian Point’s evacuation plans did not properly address the possible effects of a terrorist attack. In the past, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has accepted assurances from FEMA that the plans are in place and worked in a tabletop exercise. An approved evacuation plan is a condition of the nuclear plant license held by owner Entergy Nuclear Northeast.