“There was a minor accident at the plant yesterday, but the public’s health and safety has not been threatened in any way,” said a nervous Mike O’Brien to the crowd. “It is an underground leak we discovered near the transformer building. We are constantly monitoring it, and we are working with the NRC to find out where it is coming from.”
Just as a reporter next to him raised his hand to question O’Brien, Lou heard a woman’s voice blurt out.
“What are the radiation levels? Surely you checked that first thing?”
Lou turned to get a better look at the woman and saw it was the same one in the flowered skirt, now standing, her arm outstretched, pointing at O’Brien. A flashbulb went off, the light illuminating the woman’s tawny complexion and lighting up her intense, dark eyes.
Lou jotted down some notes about the woman and waited for O’Brien to respond.
“We are proceeding cautiously, Ms. Chase,” Mike said to her. Diana had become a familiar face at these meetings. “We don’t want to make the leak worse than it already is. It will take time to figure it out.”
“Have you checked that maze of underground piping yet?” she scolded. She turned to the small group of politicians standing behind O’Brien. “And what do our local politicians have to say? You ought to be ashamed of letting a multibillion dollar company lead you around by the nose just because they pay a chunk of taxes and pad your campaigns. That plant is dangerous. It needs to be closed down, and you know it!”
For a wisp of a woman, Lou saw she was confident and had no trouble speaking her mind. He wouldn’t want to be playing against this lady, that’s for sure.
Bob grabbed the mic. “I’m sure there are a lot of questions, and we will answer them after everyone has spoken.”
O’Brien, not to be overshadowed by Bob, grabbed back the mic. He couldn’t let this brazen, outspoken woman have the last word.
“We know there are problems at the plant, but we are working on them,” said the ALLPower VP. “We just spent about $15 million upgrading major parts of the facility. The plant will be as good as new and will run smoothly without an incident for the next twenty years.”
The woman held her ground. “No it won’t, and you know it,” she shot out. “That plant was built to last only forty years, and it’s almost that old right now. That’s why things are breaking down, and it’s unsafe. The government should shut it down.”
A clamor broke out. Suddenly workers from the plant wearing ALLPower T-shirts and caps jeered at Diana, yelling out that the plant was a safe place to work, that a thousand employees wouldn’t work there if it was dangerous.
Someone blurted into the microphone and asked for quiet. A man wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with “Shut it Down!” suddenly stood on a chair holding a large poster that said “ALLPower: Profits Before Safety!”
A few security guards moved toward the man, and he quickly got off the chair. Things quieted down.
A plant inspector gave some details about an initial investigation and fielded questions from the public. Reporters had a few more queries, and then, after about an hour, the meeting was over. Guards started ushering people out, calmly saying “time to head home now, folks.”
Bob stayed close to his boss’s side. He saw Lou circling in and stepped out in front of Mike.
“Hey, Lou. You need any other information, you talk to me, okay?”
Lou ignored him and angled over to Mike. “What about those pipes the woman mentioned. Any possibility they’re broken?”
Before Mike could answer, Bob blurted out, “We are preparing an in-depth statement that will answer all your questions, Lou. It will include the inspector’s report.”
It wasn’t an answer, which stumped and confused Lou. Folks never put him off, here or in the sports world.
“Does that mean you just don’t know at this time?” He was feeding Bob the answers for chrissakes.
“You’ll just have to wait for the press release. We’ll e-mail it to you first thing.”
Lou glared at the two men. Then he turned on his heel and headed for the Chase woman, who was being interviewed by the local TV. A large video light electrified her face. She looked anything but threatening, but her words were strong and articulate. When she finished, the TV camera sought out one of the many politicians hungry to get on the nightly news.
Lou approached Diana. “Excuse me. Ms. Chase, is it?”
“Please, call me Diana. And you are?”
“Lou Padera from the Daily Suburban. Can I ask you a few questions?
“Yes. We can walk and talk.” She briskly grabbed a worn shopping bag overflowing with anti-nuclear flyers, pamphlets, pens, and bumper stickers. Some of it cascaded out onto the floor, and as she gracefully swooped down to retrieve the paraphernalia, Lou saw her hair part like a satin curtain at her neck, revealing a small birth mark. His lips parted. She stood up and caught him checking her out.
“Padera. Padera. Oh yes, the sportswriter. Didn’t you write that terribly sad story about the little girl who died? She was a student in my school. Tragic, so tragic.” She shook her head.
There was something vaguely familiar about her voice. Could he have interviewed her at a school game?
“It was a hard story to write,” he told her. “Not at all like covering sports. Can I ask why you are so vehemently opposed to the plant?” They walked through the thinning crowd and toward the door. When they got outside, they headed down the steps to the sidewalk. She faced him.
“The plant is an accident waiting to happen,” she said firmly. “It’s run on a shoestring, and now that it’s old, things are breaking. There are accidents, many of which go unreported.”
“What about ALLPower’s commitment to fix the place up. Fifteen million dollars isn’t exactly a shoestring.”
“It ought to be eighty million. That’s what it would take to make the plant safer than it is. They’ll only fix stuff if the NRC tells them to. And then the repairs are just small Band-Aids on large, gaping wounds. What about building a safe place to store the tons of spent, radioactive fuel? Or replacing old cables that are known fire hazards?”
The lady knew her stuff. Lou asked about the NRC: Wouldn’t they shut it down if it wasn’t safe?
“Yeah. Right. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission. They act the part and tell us things are okay, but things aren’t okay. If there is a Chernobyl-type accident here, a serious radioactive plume would contaminate several hundred miles of air and water. New York City would be uninhabitable. If it were today, they’d never build this plant here. Too densely populated.”
He felt the pulse of her words, the restless energy of someone impassioned. She spoke in clear sound bites, easy words to jot down and remember. In the heft of her rant, the timbre of her voice would notch up a pitch, and she would flush slightly. He rolled along with her words, like tapping his foot to a song, forgoing his usual impatience and the impulse to interrupt.
“I like how you talk to these guys. Gutsy,” he said.
“Oh, I learned that voice from my mother. She was—and still is—a hell-raiser in the city. It works well on the suits.”
“The suits?”
“It’s what I call guys in the nuke industry.”
Lou chuckled. He jotted down her quotes in his quick, reliable shorthand. He stood close to her, not wanting to miss a word she said. She was exotic, standing slightly taller than him, slim in her tight-fitting black blouse and her flowing skirt. He felt the urge to flirt, to break out of the newsman role.
“Who are you?” he said. “How come we haven’t met before?”