Our local Nuke plant operator is spending a LOT of money on a publicity campaign to fight the possibility that it might have to build cooling towers at Indian Point in order to protect the vast quantities of water creatures it currently sucks up (and kills, of course) in the current reactor cooling process. Their alternative idea is to build something that looks like the doohicky I drew, which frankly I can’t believe hasn’t been in place the whole time anyway. The big problem with the doohicky is it doesn’t address the super-heated water that is cycled back into the Hudson, killing further vast quantities of marine life, and not solving the issue that the Department of Environmental Conservation is pressing them to fix.

Interestingly, Entergy – The parent company – is bending over backwards to make an ecological argument, saying the cooling towers will be a blight on the pristine Hudson riverfront. Frankly, the mid fifties-era huge grey cement domes, coupled with red and white towers and sundry large industrial outbuildings already qualify as nasty, depressing eyesores on that particular bend in the otherwise gorgeous Hudson River.
Seeing two more ugly industrial monstrosities on the site would be acceptable if we knew they would alleviate the blight below the surface of the Hudson. So Entergy, if you simply must stay in the electrical generating business in the Lower Hudson Valley, please install the wedgewire ASAP so it can temporarily and partially solve the environmental problem – while you are simultaneously building the cooling towers. We can’t afford not to.

A quick note to my dear puzzled and disgruntled email subscribers – It has been brought to my attention that some settings have been changed by the tech people who toil thanklessly to maintain this blog. Now, when you receive the daily email, you have to click on the blue headline, which will bring you to the cartoon. I apologize for the confusion. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have trouble with that. Oh, and thank you for subscribing!