STAR-no-more

["Genzer, Peter A" <genzer@BNL.GOV>]

FYI...



Peter A. Genzer

Principal Media & Communications Specialist

Brookhaven National Laboratory

Phone: 631 344-3174

Fax: 631 344-3368

E-mail: genzer@bnl.gov

Web: www.bnl.gov

http://www.newsday.com/mynews/ny-listar033266273may03.story STAR's Light Wanes 

Hamptons environmental group folds under financial woesBy Bill BleyerSTAFF WRITERMay 3, 2003Star power wasn't enough to keep STAR going.Standing for Truth About Radiation, the East Hampton-based foundation headed

by former supermodel Christie Brinkley and her husband, architect Peter

Cook, has virtually shut down in an attempt to reorganize.The 6-year-old group that has been suing and lobbying to shut down nuclear

reactors has dissolved its 11-member board of directors that had included

luminaries such as actor-writer Spaulding Gray, let go its staff of three

and on Wednesday closed its office on trendy Newtown Lane because it was

broke.But Cook, the chairman of the board, said Friday that STAR will be

reconstituted with a new board of financial heavyweights who can afford to

fund its annual budget of around $400,000 out of their pockets.In the meantime, the foundation formed in 1997 to push for shutting down

Brookhaven National Laboratory's High Flux Beam Reactor for safety reasons

will continue to maintain its Web site - www.noradiation.org - and

Washington consultant so it can continue some projects.While STAR's public face was its media events such as the celebrity-studded

protest cruises featuring Brinkley, Billy Joel and Jimmy Buffett trying to

shut down the Millstone nuclear power plant in Waterford, Conn.,

environmentalists and East End public officials praised the group for its

dedicated scientific and lobbying work to fight the threat of nuclear

contamination."We accomplished a great deal," said Scott Cullen, STAR's counsel before

becoming director of coastal conservation programs for the Nature

Conservancy's East Hampton office this week. "We shut down the reactor at

the lab" and helped push the Long Island Power Authority to begin an

offshore windmill project. "With Millstone, we were doinghigh-profile events but we were also engaged in five or six lawsuits and

conducted scientific sampling over there."East Hampton Supervisor Jay Schneiderman said "they played an important role

in closing down the nuclear reactor at Brookhaven, promoting renewable

energy and putting pressure on Millstone to make safety improvements."But critics saw the group as biased hysterical dilettantes."STAR had almost zero scientific credibility," said Stephen Shapiro,

director of Brookhaven National Laboratory's Center for Neutron Science.The problem for the group, Cook said, was that it was hard to get people on

Long Island - and beyond the Island - interested in Millstone and the lack

of an evacuation plan for the East End in case of a nuclear accident.

"People don't want to think about it as a New York issue," he said, "but

Millstone is 11 miles from the South Fork of Long Island and we have no

evacuation plan."The bottom line is that STAR ran out of money at the end of last year,"

Cook continued. "We had a very aggressive campaign last year to develop a

new Web presence and TV commercials and print ads in the hope that it would

give us something to market to get people to donate. It turned out that it

didn't." He said the poor economy and concerns about security after the

Sept. 11 attacks also hurt fund-raising.Gwynn Schroeder of the North Fork Environmental Council, whose group worked

with STAR on Millstone, said, "I think they were extremely effective. They

were really dedicated individuals and there will be a big void." Copyright © 2003, Newsday, Inc. 





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