Without good health it’s difficult to hold down a job or live the American dream. Chronic illness is debilitating and impacts a family’s income, prosperity and ultimately its happiness.
The annual health benefits of the rule are enormous. EPA has relied on thousands of studies that established the serious and long term impact of these pollutants on premature deaths, heart attacks, hospitalizations, pregnant women, babies and children.
Moreover, it significantly reduces the largest remaining human-caused emissions of mercury–a potent neurotoxin with fetal impacts.
Maybe some can shrug off the advice of the American Academy of Pediatrics and others but I cannot.
Amen and Amen.
Thank you, Sen. Rockefeller!
I am so happy to see this from the Senior United States Senator from West Virginia!
Maybe this will make a difference for West Virginians and also here in Hampton Roads, Virginia with the proposed 1500 MW Cypress Creek Power Station (ODEC’s proposed coal plant in Dendron, Surry County, VA).
Just one from the very interesting comment section:
Howard Swint says:
June 20, 2012 at 1:18 pm
I support Sen. Rockefeller for his bold leadership in this speech. It’s been a long time coming…
Old Dominion Electric Cooperative will hold a second round of public hearings on a rezoning and conditional use permit to build the state’s largest coal-fueled power plant in Dendron next year.
On Monday, the company’s executive board decided that Old Dominion will repeat the hearings rather than challenge Surry Circuit Court Judge Sam Campbell’s Nov. 18 ruling that residents were not properly notified of the Dendron Town Council’s intent to vote after the first hearing on Feb. 1, 2010, said company spokesman David Hudgins. The company wants to build Cypress Creek Power Station, a 1,500-megawatt coal-burning power plant, on 1,200 acres in town.
The date of the new public hearing – and a subsequent town council vote – for the proposed power station will not be set until 2012. Company and town attorneys will make sure the town’s intent to vote is clear in any advertisements, Hudgins said.
Glad they can’t pull one over on the public this time…
Sadly, when they can see those dollar signs, I can easily see the Town of Dendron and Surry County going for this all over again…yep. They won’t stop till they get what they want whether it’s good for the health of property owners and residents or not.
Yep, do something stupid and expect God to mitigate the damage to people, the earth and wildlife…whatever happened to taking care of what God gave us?! Coal mining and burning coal … oh, yeah, that’s gotta be a good thing for people (especially children, the elderly and those at risk healthwise like my Jim who is on an oxygen concentrator), the earth and wildlife…oh, yeah…that makes sense. NOT.
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.
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:
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…
In a new report, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation estimates that air pollution from the ODEC plant would cost $200 million each year in new health care costs. The report predicts 442 additional asthma attacks annually, 3,340 work days lost to sickness, 40 heart attacks and 26 premature deaths in the region.
Dispute, if you like, the precision of those estimates. But to pretend the actual number is 0 – or anywhere near it – is folly.
So true that…
And those of us who live in Hampton Roads will suffer the consequences … particularly those here in Dendron, VA with health issues already.
Course the needs of the many seem to outweigh the lives of the few, or the one…
Except to the loved ones of those this 1500MW coal plant will put in jeopardy…or worse.
Virginia has the second-dirtiest waterways among the 50 states.
That’s according to a recent study by the Environment America advocacy group tallying the amount of pollutants discharged into bodies of water across the nation.
Based on numbers reported to federal authorities, only Indiana had more toxic chemicals released into its waterways by industry than Virginia’s 18 million-plus pounds in 2007.
Sad. Really sad.
So yeah, I see where they are going … the state’s waterways are already a disaster area, so let’s let ODEC add insult to injury by building the state’s largest coal fired power plant – running 24/7 at 1500 MW in Dendron, (Surry, VA.) Hmmm….
