Mercury in the Alapaha River probably comes from coal Plant Scherer near Macon. EPA is holding public hearings on its proposed Clean Power Plan next week, 29-30 July 2014, in Atlanta. You can also comment online until 16 October 2014 on Docket ID EPA-HQ-OAR-2013-0602. And you can express your opinion outside with Georgia Sierra Club at the Atlanta Climate Rally Tuesday at high noon. Maybe you want to mention shifting from coal to “natural” gas (fracked methane) actually may make matters worse here, so EPA needs to go further.

While that proposed carbon rule may help clean up coal plants like Scherer, it says nothing about methane, which EPA says is 20 times worse than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas causing climate change. So that figure above showing much higher emissions from coal is misleading: a much smaller amount of leaked methane has much worse effects than CO2. Georgia Power and Southern Company are shifting from coal to “natural” gas. Worse, FPL wants to spend $3 billion to run the Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline through Alabama, Georgia, and Florida, gouging a hundred-foot right of way through our fields, forests, wetlands, and sticking its 36-inch pipeline under our Withlacoochee River twice. Methane leaks at fracking wells, from pipelines and compressor stations, and from power plants, and all of those use huge amounts of water, for drilling, pressure testing, and cooling. Even if that pipeline doesn’t leak or explode, it’s a menace to our wetlands and our property rights, which is why WWALS filed as an intervenor against it. Meanwhile, solar power is already cheaper than any other power source, including “natural” gas, according to Sabal Trail’s own figures would take half the acreage to produce just as much electricity as that pipeline, doesn’t gouge under our rivers. Solar power requires no eminent domain, no fuel, no cooling water, and provides jobs and lower electric bills right here where we need them. So you may want to mention that EPA needs to go further and propose and implement a rule for methane, to help us get on with solar power here in the sunny southeast.

Here’s the location for the EPA hearings:

July 29 and July 30, 2014
Atlanta, Georgia
9:00 a.m. – 8:00 p.m. (EST)
Sam Nunn Atlanta Federal Center
Main Tower Bridge Conference Area, Conference Room B
61 Forsyth Street, SW
Atlanta, GA 30303

Here’s the Sierra Club invitation to the Atlanta Climate Rally:

WHO: You, Sierra Club, and other climate and clean energy activists
WHAT: Rally and March to EPA headquarters July 29 at Noon and EPA hearing on carbon limits for power plants
WHEN: Rally and March: Tuesday, July 29at Noon; Hearing, Wednesday July 30, 9:00 a.m. – 8:00 p.m.
WHERE: Rally and March: Woodruff Park Atlanta (map)
Hearing: Sam Nunn Atlanta Federal Center, Main Tower Bridge Conference Area, Conference Room B, 61 Forsyth Street, SW, Atlanta (map)

Sierra Club is organizaing busses from as far away as Kentucky. For more details, follow the link, see the facebook event. For further questions contact Seth Gunning at seth.gunning@sierraclub.org.

WWALS helped Sierra Club last summer, testifying before the Georgia Public Service Commission for more solar power by Georgia Power. We won. Let’s win some more.

-jsq

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