Tag Archives: coal

Crystal River overflight, Sabal Trail End of Line @ WWALS 2017-02-07

Detail, End of Sabal Trail Citrus County Line, 28.9643640, -82.6679600 What’s going on at the end of Sabal Trail’s Citrus County Line at Duke’s new natural gas plant in Crystal River, Florida?

The End of Line is the square in the upper left of the picture. But what’s all that equipment just east across the access road at 14001 West Power Line Street, Crystal River, FL, 28.963298, -82.667413? According to the Citrus County Property Appraiser, that other property is one small corner of a huge tract owned by HCR LIMESTONE INC, ATTN HOLCIM TAX DEPARTMENT, 201 JONES RD, WALTHAM MA 02451.

Meanwhile, there’s no activity at Continue reading →

Solar and wind can make coal go away with no need for natural gas. –WWALS to Suwannee BOCC 2016-01-19

The Commissioners for the one county on every Sabal Trail fracked methane path ever proposed, Suwannee County, Florida, meet tonight at 6PM in Live Oak. I can’t go, so I sent them this letter (PDF). If you can go, please do, or you can send them a letter, too.

To: Suwannee County Board of County Commissioners,

Dear Commissioners,

Thanks again for your hospitality at your meeting of December 15th.

Solar and wind can make coal go away with no need for natural gas.

The FPL representative who spoke didn’t seem aware of what Southern Company CEO Tom Fanning said about solar power last June: “If somebody wants to buy distributed generation, I want to sell it to 'em." See Herman K. Trabish, UtilityDive, June 11, 2015, “Inside Georgia Power's move into the residential solar market: The utility says it will offer solar through an unregulated business, but installers fear possible anticompetitive impacts”:
http://www.utilitydive.com/news/inside-georgia-powers-move-into-the-residential-solar-market/400562/

That meeting gave me deja vu about a few years ago when Georgia Power and Southern Company were claiming Continue reading →

Waterkeeper Annual Report

Cover Here’s a glimpse of the sea in which WWALS this year became a minnow: the Annual Report of Waterkeeper® Alliance, which has 258 members and affiliates (like WWALS) in 33 countries.

Our coastal Georgia siblings, Savannah Riverkeeper, Ogeechee Riverkeeper, Altamaha Riverkeeper, and Satilla Riverkeeper, are mentioned on page 22 as “beat back Kinder Morgan pipeline”. St Johns Riverkeeper of Jacksonville, Florida was also involved in that.

Waterkeeper and numerous Riverkeepers have also been helping in the fight against the Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline, as well as with numerous other matters WWALS is involved in. Continue reading →

EPA coal plant emission limits still in place during legal cost review

Justice Scalia never said the EPA emissions rule was struck down, rather the Supreme Court sent it back to a lower court to get a cost analysis from EPA. 300x305 Mercury, in Improving Air Quality in Georgia, by Georgia Power, 30 June 2015 Meanwhile, many of the emissions controls are already in place on coal plants (including Plant Scherer), other coal plants have closed or are closing, and investors are abandoning coal in droves. So what Scalia wants may or may not be impossible for EPA to deliver, but EPA actually already has helped sink dirty coal. Meanwhile, Georgia Power finally is helping the sun rise on Georgia. So the prognosis is good for less mercury in the Alapaha River.

Emily Atkin, ThinkProgress Climate, 29 June 2015, What Everyone Is Getting Wrong About The Supreme Court’s Mercury Pollution Ruling, Continue reading →

Supreme Court rules on cost against EPA coal plant emission limitations

The EPA should account for all costs before making a ruling on mercury or other coal plant emissions, according to a 5:4 majority of the Supreme Court. The dissenting minority points out not only are costs usually figured in during the follow-on process for specific limits, but that actual costs can’t even be computed without knowing those limits. So Coal Plant Scherer mercury in the Alapaha River can’t be limited without figuring all the costs first, says the SCOTUS majority, although EPA and the Court minority point to numerous well-known medical problems caused by mercury. Are profits for a few big utilities and coal companies more important than clean water and public health, especially now that there are cleaner, safer, faster-to-build, and less expensive renewable energy sources available in solar and wind power?

According to today’s SCOTUS ruling, Continue reading →

WWALS at Earth Day by S.A.V.E. at Drexel Park near VSU today

Update 2014-04-25 11:AM: Unfortunately the whole event has been cancelled.

300x225 Earth Day 2015, in Earth Day by S.A.V.E., by John S. Quarterman, for WWALS.net, 25 April 2015 Come hear from Students Against Violating the Environment (S.A.V.E.) about fossil fuel divestment and other environmental issues, 1-4PM today in Drexel Park, NE corner of Patterson Street and Brookwood Avenue; Facebook event. Rain location: University Center, just south of Brookwood.

WWALS will have Alapaha River Water Trail brochures, flyers for the Third Annual BIG Little River Paddle Race 2015-05-16 and other WWALS events, plus news about opposition to the Sabal Trail pipeline.

WWALS and S.A.V.E. have long been allied in opposing the Sabal Trail pipeline, and in proposing fossil fuel divestment. WWALS sent a letter to the VSU Foundation 18 October 2013 quoting S.A.V.E.: Continue reading →

Coal plant mercury in Alapaha River

Update 2015-04-28: See EPA 2002 report that spells out Plant Scherer as the largest mercury point source in the Alapaha Airshed.

Background to the EPA hearings on its proposed Clean Power Plan: EPA previously said nonpoint source pollution is the biggest water quality problem, and EPA and GA EPD say our Alapaha River is contaminated with mercury. That mercury comes from Plant Scherer, the country’s dirtiest coal plant.

The problem, effects, and cause are spelled out in these Comments on CAMR Draft, Language Options by Jill Johnson, Georgia Public Interest Research Group, April 6, 2006: Continue reading →

Ask Georgia Power to conserve our water –WWALS to GA PSC

Approved 12 June 2013 by unanimous vote of the WWALS board, Dave has mailed a signed copy to the Georgia Public Service Commission, and I will go read it to the PSC Tuesday morning at 10 AM 18 June 2013, at their hearing about

Docket 36498, Georgia Power Company’s 2013 Integrated Resource Plan and Application for Decertification of Various Units
and
Docket 36499, Application for the Certification of Amended Demand Side Management Plan

Y’all come! -jsq

From: WWALS Watershed Coalition, Inc.
3338 Country Club Road #L336
Valdosta, GA 31605
12 June 2013

To: Georgia
Public Service Commission
244 Washington Street, SW
Atlanta GA, 30334-9052

Dear Public Service Commissioners and Staff,

The recent rains have swollen our blackwater rivers, Withlacoochee, Willacoochee, Alapaha, and Little, under our longleaf pines and Spanish-moss-covered oaks, and filled up the tea-colored tannin waters in our frog-singing pocosin cypress swamps here in central South Georgia. But that was only a dent in our protracted drought that ranges from mild to extreme, with projections not much better.

We do not need more traditional big baseload power plants gulping down our river or aquifer water when solar and wind power use far less, and those renewables are now at grid parity with coal, natural gas, and nuclear.

Power plants are thirsty, as the Union of Concerned Scientists pointed out in a 2011 report, “Freshwater Use by U.S. Power Plants: Electricity’s Thirst for a Precious Resource”.

Much of the water used to cool power plants evaporates, and is Continue reading →