AN ILL WIND – The Secret Threat of Coal Ash

First, I would like to thank those who got our grid power back on here in Virginia after Hurricane Irene knocked it out about 24 hrs before Irene made landfall in the Outerbanks of NC.

One thing that being out of power for more than a couple days does do is make you realize how dependent we all have become on ‘the grid’ and how we really need to change that at some point, don’t you think? Between dangers of outages like this, and potential threats from terrorists on our infrastructure, it just seems to make sense that we figure out a way to get the power we need but by decentralizing from The Grid.

Over the last month, since August 4th, we have intermittently had to deal with the smoke and ill air quality of the wildfire in the dismal swamp. There were times when here in our little town there was smoke hanging in the air, and in our very homes when we woke up in the morning and were having trouble breathing. It was particularly bad for my Jim who is on an oxygen concentrator. Thankfully, Hurricane Irene, actually did one thing that was good, it almost (but not quite) put out that wildfire. I hope they can get the 30 or so hot spots put out before it dries out again.

Because I have a problem with the whole issue of dangerous coal ash, and huge coal plants close to people’s homes and spewing dangerous arsenic, and so much more into our air, does not mean I don’t appreciate The Grid or those who work to provide and maintain, and restore that power after natural disasters like this. My only complaint is the dangerous ways in which they often do that; meaning coal – from the cradle to the grave and the health and environmental dangers it poses.

Coal from Mountain Top Removal to this ILL WIND of coal ash that sends ‘sandstorms’ of coal ash directly over the reservation when the winds blow wrong, and other coal plant travesties around the country and around the world, to ODEC trying to get a 1500 MW coal fired power plant in Dendron, VA and Surry County rolling over to get the money they are promised and the empty purse of promised jobs (yeah, how many and for how long, and what of those who live here?) To the whole of a region like Hampton Roads that will be adversely affected by a 1500 MW coal plant with a prevailing wind that will draw that smoke/vapor over other areas in Hampton Roads.

From the text at Youtube:

See the whole project at http://www.earthjustice.org/illwind

The Moapa River Indian Reservation, tribal home of the Moapa Band of Paiutes, sits about 30 miles north of Las Vegas and about 300 yards from the coal ash ponds and landfills of the Reid Gardner Power Station. Coal ash is the toxic ash and sludge left at the end of the coal burning process. It’s laced with arsenic, mercury, lead and other heavy metals. It’s the second largest waste stream in America and it’s currently unregulated.

If the conditions are just wrong, coal ash picks up from Reid Gardner and moves across the desert like a toxic sandstorm sending the local residents running for their homes. The reservation has lung, heart and thyroid disease rates that are abnormally high and the power plant is currently seeking to expand its coal ash storage capability.

The film An Ill Wind tells the Paiute Indians’ story.

View and interactive presentation of the story at:

http://www.earthjustice.org/illwind

Watch the complete film at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lL49Ibc0L88

And learn more about coal ash at:

http://www.earthjustice.org/coalash

Many thanks to the Moapa Band of Paiutes for allowing us to tell this story and to Vinny Spotleson of the Sierra Club and Dan Galpern of the Western Environmental Law Center for helping with the project.

I guess we as individuals and families really do need to start thinking about how we can get ourselves off the grid … if more homes are off the grid, these big coal plants wouldn’t even be considered necessary…

ODEC, Surry BOS, Dendron Town Council

Here is a Cree Prophesy that I thought would be appropriate for contemplation with the upcoming public meeting about ODEC’s proposed coal fired 24/7 baseload power plant (Cypress Creek Power Station) in the Town of Dendron, Surry County, Virginia, which will affect all of Hampton Roads:

When all the trees have been cut down,
when all the animals have been hunted,
when all the waters are polluted,
when all the air is unsafe to breathe,
only then will you discover you cannot eat money.

And here is an article that speaks volumes on this topic:

Old Dominion Electric Cooperative turns green, but keeps coal with Dendron plant proposal (DailyPress):

The announcement mentions other contracts to buy power from a landfill gas-to-energy project, a hydroelectric project and another wind power project yet to be built.

Bravo.

It’s heartening to see a commitment to clean power, and any efforts — however small-scale — to purchase and transmit electricity generated by renewable sources.

That only leaves one big, dirty elephant in the room: ODEC’s proposed coal plant in Dendron. This is the $4 billion coal-fired facility planned for a 1,600-acre site in this tiny town in Surry County. If built, it could generate up to 1,500 megawatts, enough to supply power to 375,000 customers.

By comparison, the 101 megawatts from the Pennsylvania wind farm is a puff of air.

How true! The Cypress Creek Power Station would be (if approved) Virginia’s largest coal fired power plant. And although ODEC likes to tout it as being like the Clover, VA plant which is 3 miles from the tiny town of Clover, the Cypress Creek coal plant (if approved) will be twice the size of the Clover Plant and well within a mile of our homes in Dendron, VA.

So it bears repeating:

When all the trees have been cut down,
when all the animals have been hunted,
when all the waters are polluted,
when all the air is unsafe to breathe,
only then will you discover you cannot eat money.

Air Pollution Increases Infants’ Risk Of Bronchiolitis

Air Pollution Increases Infants’ Risk Of Bronchiolitis (ScienceDaily.com)

Infants who are exposed to higher levels of air pollution are at increased risk for bronchiolitis, according to a new study.

The study appears in the November 15 issue of the American Thoracic Society’s American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

“There has been very little study of the consequences of early life exposure to air pollution,” said Catherine Karr, M.D. PhD, assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington and the paper’s lead author. “This study is unique in that we were able to look at multiple sources including wood smoke in a region with relatively low concentrations of ambient air pollution overall.”

Much more in the article!

American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine – part E. Environmental and Occupational Lung Disease of the current November 15, 2009 issue.

Registration is required to read the full article however, the abstract is available here which includes the conclusions below:

Conclusions: Air pollutants from several sources may increase infant bronchiolitis requiring clinical care. Traffic, local point source emissions, and wood smoke may contribute to this disease.

Under measurements and readings above the conclusions states:

An interquartile increase in lifetime exposure to NO2, NO, SO2, CO, wood-smoke exposure days, and point source emissions score was associated with increased risk of bronchiolitis…

What pollutants do coal plants introduce? At least a few of those listed, plus more: Power Plant Emissions Publications

Clash in Alabama Over Tennessee Coal Ash

Clash in Alabama Over Tennessee Coal Ash (NYTimes)

Almost every day, a train pulls into a rail yard in rural Alabama, hauling 8,500 tons of a disaster that occurred 350 miles away to a final resting place, the Arrowhead Landfill here in Perry County, which is very poor and almost 70 percent black.

This ‘windfall’ of dumping all this dangerous coal ash in their landfill will “add more than $3 million to their County’s budget of about $4.5 million” the article goes on to say. This little Alabama county has an unemployment rate of 17 percent and only a chosen few really were able to get any work from this so called ‘windfall’ for the County.

Some of us here in Dendron, Virginia, in Surry County, where ODEC proposes to build a 1,500 MW coal fired power plant with a coal ash/fly ash landfill in our little town’s back yard have been wondering the same thing some of Perry County residents have been wondering:

But some residents worry that their leaders are taking a short-term view, and that their community has been too easily persuaded to take on a wealthier, whiter community’s problem. “Money ain’t worth everything,” said Mary Gibson Holley, 74, a black retired teacher in Uniontown. “In the long run, they ain’t looking about what this could do to the community if something goes wrong.”

And in just one of many parallels between the thinking in Perry County Alabama, and here in Surry County:

County leaders, who are mostly black, bristle at accusations of environmental injustice, saying that the ash is perfectly safe and that criticism has been fostered by outsiders, or even competitors who wanted the ash disposal contract for themselves.

And this:

But in Perry County, a lack of trust has permeated the debate. Residents said they feared equipment failure, flooding, tornadoes or lack of oversight at the landfill, where the Alabama Department of Environmental Management, whose notably lax regulation of coal ash permits most landfills to use it as a cover material for other waste, will be responsible for enforcement.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Cownan River Map that includes the Blackwater River system in Virginia that flows to the Arlbemerle Sound, NC.

One of the major differences is the distance to the water table in Perry County and here in Dendron in Surry County. Here in Dendron, that water table is only about 4 feet (and many are still on their own wells in the surrounding area of the County), and wetlands are on at least two sides of the proposed site within contamination distance to the Blackwater River system that flows to the Albemerle Sound, NC:

The Blackwater River was a transportation route in the 17th and 18th centuries, connecting the Chesapeake Bay settlements with the Albemarle Settlements. It was one of the few rivers of colonial Virginia that did not empty into Chesapeake Bay yet lay close to the colony’s oldest settlements on the James River. Settlements in the Blackwater’s drainage basin were founded very early in Virginia’s history. As a result, the Blackwater River became one of the early migration routes southward from the James River into the region then called Southside Virginia, and beyond into the Albemarle District of Carolina (later North Carolina). Today’s usual definition of Southside differs somewhat from that of colonial times.

Of course, ODEC wants to build a 15 mile pipeline directly to the James River for ingress and egress of water for cooling.

One of the other major differences between Perry County and here in Dendron is the railroad cars. The railroad cars here in Dendron will bring in the coal to ‘make’ the coal ash to be stored in the landfill and when that gets full, to find some place to take the coal ash off their hands, like Perry County, or golf greens in other Counties, or maybe put it in concrete to build things all over the place.

Must read article.

gamkqrhtuy

USACE solicits public comments on Nationwide Permit 21 in Appalachia

Army Corps of Engineers Solicits Public Comment on Two Proposals Related to Nationwide Permit 21 in the Appalachian Region (Earthtimes.org)

Posted by the USACE:

WASHINGTON, July 15 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced today it is soliciting public comments on two proposals related to the use of Nationwide Permit (NWP) 21 in the nation’s Appalachian region. NWP 21 authorizes discharges of dredged or fill material into waters of the United States for surface coal mining activities.

The proposals would affect only the Appalachian region of the following states: Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. The use of NWP 21 for surface coal mining activities in other regions of the country would not be affected.

The first proposal is to modify NWP 21 to prohibit its use in the Appalachian region. In the absence of NWP 21, an applicant would be required to obtain an individual permit for surface coal mining projects. An individual permit includes increased public and agency involvement in the permit review process, including an opportunity for public comment on individual projects.

The second proposal is to suspend NWP 21 while the Corps evaluates the comments received during the 30-day comment period, and while the Corps completes the process to modify NWP 21. If NWP 21 is suspended during this interim period, an applicant would be required to obtain an individual permit for surface coal mining projects.

The Corps’ decision to issue these proposals is a result of the interagency action plan agreed to on June 11, 2009, as part of a Memorandum of Understanding signed by the Corps, the U.S. Department of the Interior, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The agencies agreed to work together to reduce the adverse environmental impacts of surface coal mining activities in the Appalachian region. A copy of the MOU is available at: http://www.usace.army.mil/CECW/Pages/moumoas.aspx.

A public notice on the proposals was published in the July 15, 2009 Federal Register, http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2009/pdf/E9-16803.pdf . Written comments should be submitted at the federal eRulemaking portal at http://www.regulations.gov under docket number COE-2009-0032; or mailed to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Attn: CECW-CO (Attn: Ms. Desiree Hann), 441 G. Street N.W., Washington, D.C. 20314. Comments must be submitted on or before August 14, 2009. Email or faxed comments will not be accepted.

SOURCE U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

It would appear to me that the USACE does try to do what they can to protect the communities and nature when they have the support of the government, and the public. But, I would think it would be difficult to do so if their hands are tied by either weak laws, greed, or when those in places of power bend like reeds in the wind.

I am sorry to say that this is too little, too late. The existing laws it seems have not been fully enforced as they should be for a very long time — for 500 mountains are already blown up! And hundreds more are in the pike.

What ever happened to “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” — is that too much to ask? Those who think these practices are good, or at least a necessary evil, could they, or more importantly would they, walk in the moccasins, drink the water, live in the homes of those who have suffered due to these destructive or at best polluting practices? Would they want this done to their home? The same holds true for coal plants.

Honestly, it seems to me that even the current laws would be difficult to adhere to when confronted with such a destructive process as Mountain Top Removal. The process itself is the problem.

IMHO, either those who are mining coal should figure out how to get the coal out without impacting the surrounding natural area (the forests, streams, animals, etc.) and the human communities that have put their entire lives and fortunes into their mountain homes, or find a new safer business model that doesn’t hurt people, places or things.

Certainly, renewable energy sources would be much safer for everyone and everything and not be the one shot that Mountain Top Removal is (once you blow up the mountain and take the coal, it’s gone). Not to mention the joke of supposedly trying to put the mountains back to rights after they’ve already been destroyed.

The effects of MTR (Mountain Top Removal) on communities and nature, and the other end of the spectrum, the effects of Coal Fired Power Plants on communities and nature, can be seen through many places including my postings, iLoveMountains.org, Environmental Justice or through searches in search engines. It truly is appalling.

Even if other methods are, or seem like they are more expensive right now, they won’t be for long as they become more ubiquitous. Just as in other areas, once the R&D has been paid for, the prices do come down.

NO ONE SHOULD SUFFER TO PROVIDE ELECTRICITY TO ANYONE.
EVER.

The Quest for Environmental Justice: Human Rights

The Quest for Environmental Justice: Human Rights

Hmmm, ODEC has proposed a 1,500 MW baseload coal fired power plant — running 24/7, with two fly ash/coal ash landfills, two turbines, two 600 foot stacks polluting the air, land, water, livestock, humans, and additionally causing sight, noise and light pollution … yeah, I think this scenario certainly fits with the topic of Environmental Justice discussed in this video.