John Roberts’ legal drill on LI

[cal04]

Supreme Court nominee was lawyer who backed evacuation test, despite county opposition

As the struggle over an emergency evacuation plan for the Shoreham nuclear power plant raged on Long Island nearly 20 years ago, a little-known White House lawyer played a quiet, if crucial, role by finding a legal way out of a presidential promise. That lawyer was John G. Roberts, then a young associate White House counsel and now a Supreme Court nominee, and a memo showing his role in Shoreham turned up in the 35,000 pages of Roberts' documents from the 1980s that were released this week.


Key players from opposite sides of the Shoreham fight, former LILCO vice president Ira Freilicher and former Suffolk County deputy executive Frank Jones, marveled at the reach of Shoreham. As Freilicher put it, "I'm amazed that the ghost of Shoreham can come back and haunt the nomination of a Supreme Court justice. Shoreham destroyed many lives. I hope it doesn't destroy another."

Dated Jan. 22, 1986, the memo was written by Roberts as Suffolk County government resisted a federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission test-run of an evacuation plan for an emergency at Shoreham. The county insisted that no plan would work, refused to participate in the test run and made it a misdemeanor for anyone to "stand in" as a county employee during the exercise.

In response, the Justice Department drafted a letter to the county seeking assurances it wouldn't use the law against federal officials who participated in the test, and threatened to sue if it did. But first, Justice ran its letter by the White House counsel's office because of a catch. On Oct. 11, 1984, President Ronald Reagan had sent a letter to help Rep. Bill Carney, a Republican then representing the East End, who was then in a tight race. The letter said the Reagan administration "does not favor the imposition of Federal Government authority over the objections of state and local governments on the adequacy of an emergency evacuation plan for a nuclear power plant such as Shoreham."



http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-uscort0820,0,5316763.story?coll=ny-homepage-bigpix2005

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/ny-lishor0820,0,726837.story?coll=ny-li-bigpix