Demand clean energy

I attended the annual meeting of the Sussex Rural Electric Co-op, Monday, June 3. We started the meeting with a prayer. Then we said the pledge of allegiance and listened to the national anthem. While I’m sure that was appreciated by some, I was not one of them. Aside from taking my time to impose prayer that is inconsistent with my personal beliefs, the whole thing felt like an indoctrination effort, not the expected proceedings of an electric company meeting.
We then sat through a long lecture praising the benefits of nuclear energy. At the end an audience member expressed concerns regarding safety and disposal of contaminated waste. The only response was that those issues were the responsibility of homeland security. This seemed totally inadequate given that past major nuclear meltdowns were due to mechanical problems, humans error or natural disasters, not deliberate sabotage. Nor does homeland security address the unsolved problem of what to do with radioactive waste from nuclear power plants which remains lethal for more than 100,000 years.
SREC is a cooperative. Maybe its time that we as members pay more attention and make our voices heard. As owners of this cooperative, let us demand that future investments for energy not be spent on dirty and risky nuclear energy but on more environmentally sound options, such as wind, solar and geothermal.
Noreen Hernandez
Highland Lakes