While there had been rumors swirling for a while, I was still highly disappointed when I saw a tweet coming from the office of New York’s Governor this morning proclaiming his “victory” in moving to close the Indian Point nuclear power plant.

For 15 years, I have been deeply concerned by safety violations at Indian Point, especially given its location. We're going to shut it down. pic.twitter.com/e0b71Y0URZ

— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) January 9, 2017

Sure enough, the New York Times had picked up on the story already and it seems to be official. Andrew Cuomo and his Albany henchmen have apparently bullied their way into shutting down the plant.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York is expected to confirm on Monday that the state has reached an agreement to shut down the Indian Point nuclear power plant, which sits less than 30 miles north of New York City, by April 2021, state officials said.

Mr. Cuomo will claim the long-sought shutdown as a victory in the State of the State speeches he is scheduled to deliver in the city and other locations this week, they said. He has argued for more than 15 years that it is unsafe for nuclear reactors to operate on the edge of the most-populous metropolitan area in the country.

Along with the governor’s office, the office of the state attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, and Riverkeeper, a nonprofit environmental group, participated in the deal.

It’s no surprise that Cuomo had his Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman, in on the deal. He’s one of the most politically driven actors in New York politics, having far more interest in scoring SJW victories than combating actual crime. These two have been drooling over the prospect of shutting down the plant for a long time now, even though it was scheduled to remain online through at least 2031 and had already filed for extensions to continue operations beyond that point.

Back in 2015 we covered the story of how Cuomo had been putting excessive pressure on Indian Point by pushing the conversion of a coal fired plant in Dunkirk to natural gas. Supporting that early conversion was reducing electric costs out of Dunkirk and putting budget pressure on the nuclear facilities. That deal fell apart completely in the end and only resulted in subtracting more energy from the grid. Indian Point remained a target for liberals, though. Bernie Sanders even made it an issue on the campaign trail last year, calling for the plant to be shut down.

And for what? Indian Point has an above average safety record and is one of the more profitable properties owned by Entergy. In fact, the plant was recently awarded the highest possible safety rating by federal regulators, as it has for a number of years running. What exactly is Cuomo worried about in terms of safety considerations… an earthquake? The last one to hit anywhere near here didn’t manage to knock over any lawn chairs. Is he perhaps worried about a tsunami? Take a look at where Indian Point is located. If a tsunami reaches that location you’ll have much bigger fish to fry because all of New York City will have been destroyed first.

And finally, let’s remember that Indian Point provides fully 25% of all the electricity consumed in the Big Apple and its suburbs. Where will the power come from to replace it? And won’t this wind up costing consumers more? Oh, Governor Cuomo has a “plan” for that as well.

Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, will argue that more than enough other sources of energy will be available by 2021, including hydropower from Quebec carried by new transmission lines, state officials said. He also will say that the effect on electric ratepayers will be negligible.

So your plan is to shut down an American energy plant of high repute and replace its output with hydroelectric power from Canada? That’s exactly the opposite of promoting domestic energy independence. And the idea that it won’t affect utility rates is a pipe dream as well. New Yorkers already pay the highest utility rates in the country outside of Hawaii and they’re only going to go further up because of this.

It’s really time to shut out the lights and have sensible residents flee the state. Andrew Cuomo and the Democrats are continuing to try to destroy what’s left of New York’s infrastructure in the name of scoring some extremely expensive political points. This is a bad joke which will be paid for by the state’s residents.