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TWO GEORGIAS AND THE COST OF COAL
Way down below the Fall Line, and so far west that it's
almost in Alabama, sits a little agricultural county called Early.
It's removed enough from most non-residents' radar screens
that I'd bet a beer I don't need more than two hands to count
the number of readers of this article who have been there. I
probably don't need more than one hand for my arithmetic,
but I'm a conservative gambler. I wouldn't know much about
the place myself except that it's the stomping grounds of my
mother's people, and I spent bits of childhood summers there
picking peanuts to boil and freeze for winter snacks and tag
ging along with my granddaddy on his rural mail route.
I object to calling Early County a backwater, but suffice it
to say that "progress" tends to happen elsewhere, and all the
money that has poured into North Georgia over the past couple
decades hasn't made it to the southwest corner of
the state. For most folks down there who need jobs
(and for the lucky few who stand to line already-fat
pockets), a little development sounds like a great
idea. And it looks like prayers for progress may have
been answered.
On Jan. 11, 2008, Judge Stephanie Howells in
Atlanta ruled to uphold the state Environmental
Protection Division's (EPD) decision to issue an
air pollution permit to Houston-based Dynegy's
Longleaf coal-fired power plant. The permit will
allow a 1200-megawatt plant to be built in Early
County on the banks of the Chattahoochee River.
It will become the first new plant to be built in
Georgia in 20 years, but it may not be the last.
On the heels of Howells' decision, a Georgia-based
consortium of power providers, Power4Georgians,
announced plans to build another plant near
Sandersville, about 90 miles south of Athens.
Most scientists—although not all—agree that
carbon dioxide emissions produced by coal-fired
power plants, including the so-called clean ones,
contribute to climate change, and climate change
has provided the most frequently cited reason to
oppose the plants. But it's not the reason that my
cousins in Southwest Georgia have been fighting
tooth and nail for the past two years to block the
Dynegy Longleaf plant. No, they are thinking about
the wilderness lands that will be leveled and others
that will be compromised by the plant, and they are
thinking about asthma.
Asthma is the number-one reason children miss
school in Georgia, and leaving the more-often cited
global climate change debate aside for a moment,
increased C02 emissions present a direct health risk
to Georgia residents. Stanford University scientist
Mark Jacobson recently published findings that
point to direct links between C02 in the atmosphere
and human mortality. "This is a cause and effect
relationship, not just a correlation," Jacobson said
of his study, published in Geophysical Research
Letters. When the summer prevailing winds kick up and bring
South Georgia air this way, we in Athens are downwind of both
the Early County and the Washington County plants. Remember
last year's smoke from the Okefenokee fires?
Georgia is already home to 12 coal-fired power plants,
and two of them are among the dirtiest in the country. With
the addition of coal-fired power plants, our asthma issue
only stands to get worse. The Dynegy Longleaf plant alone
is expected to contribute nine million tons of C02 pollution
annually, which is the equivalent of adding 1.3 million cars to
Georgia's roads every year.
GEORGIA IN THE WORLD
Asthma and our air quality in Georgia are not what worry
the country's top investment banks about the viability of
coal-fired plants, however. In February, the Wall Street Journal
reported that Citigroup, Inc., J.P. Morgan Chase and Morgan
Stanley—increasingly convinced that the U.S. government will
implement cap-and-trade standards for emissions—will demand
more stringent proof from utility companies that coal-fired
power plants are good investments before the banks will fund
them. Big banks are beginning to think of coal-fired power
plants as risky business.
Georgia government, on the other hand, seems to like
the kind of gamble that coal-fired power plants represent.
According to Friends of the Chattahoochee, the Sierra Club,
and GreenLaw—the firm arguing the case against the Dynegy
plant—the EPD permit was granted by the state in response
to details supplied directly by Dynegy, and the EPD ignored
evidence that Dynegy did not have plans to adequately restrict
health-threatening emissions nor emissions that would nega
tively impact crops essential to the local economy.
Although the plant will employ about 100 Early County resi
dents, and its construction may stimulate the local economy,
at least temporarily, the plant is not being built in response
to current or local energy needs. The Dynegy Longleaf plant
is what the industry calls a "merchant plant," which is to say
that energy generated by the plant can be sold to the highest
bidder and is likely to be sold outside the state. The gamble
Atlanta government officials have sanctioned offers short-term
gains and long-term consequences to the state's residents, not
just the folks down there in the little agricultural county called
Early.
In the few .^nths since my distant cousin, Carleen, let me
know what she was up to, I've mentioned the plant in pass
ing, and I've sent emails with abandon to North Georgia folks I
know. Few seem to be aware that new coal-fired power plants
loom menacingly in our future. More people than I'd like to
count seem to think that a South Georgia plant might as well
be a South American plant. And that gets me back to the two
Georgias.
Atlanta may be the economic center of the state, and South
Georgia might be a bunch of farmland, but that argument
starts to sound a little like the pre-Civil war chats about the
industrialized North and the agricultural South, and frankly, I
start to squirm. And when Governor Charlie Crist, just over the
border in Tallahassee, has more to say in opposition to a plant
slated for South Georgia than we do up here, I start to worry
about the blinders we might be wearing.
Georgia is one of the most populous states east of the
Mississippi and one of the fastest growing states in the
nation. We have a wealth of resources and wildly diverse
opinions about how to make good use of them. We also oper
ate like a multi-headed dragon that doesn't seem to realize
it only has one body. That the goings-on in Atlanta have
repercussions throughout the state comes as no surprise to
anyone. But the goings on in Early County, if Houston-based
Dynegy has its w-y. and the goings on in Washington County,
if Power4Georgians has its way, are about to affect all the
residents of the state for the next 50 years or so. The air we
breathe, the water in our rivers and the global climate change
situation are about to be impacted negatively if Dynegy's
Longleaf goes online and paves the way for Plant Washington
and others.
TRUE BENEFITS, TRUE COSTS
I hate to sound like an alarmist. Rather, I prefer a cost-
benefit analysis that represents a broader and more long-range
picture than the ones we tend to favor here in the United
States. Although we are acknowledged the world over for our
capacity to innovate, we are not widely believed to have much
perspective, particularly when it comes to long-range vision.
But, it doesn't take much vision to realize we need to explore
alternatives to meet our energy and employment
needs when the big investment banks are factoring
the negative effects of coal-fired power plants into
their own cost-benefit analyses. When the folks on
Wall Street are paying attention to the goings-on in
little counties in Georgia, Michigan, Arkansas, Iowa
and Nevada because utility companies are targeting
them for new coal-fired power plants, it might be
a sign to those of us in, and adjacent to, the eco
nomic powerhouses of our respective states to look
around, too.
Here's what we'll find if we look down Early
County-way: although Judge Howells' January deci
sion will be appealed, Dynegy currently has the
green light to build a 1200-megawatt coal-fired
power plant in Early County. The plant will con
sume 20 million gallons of water per day from the
Chattahoochee, a water resource that is already
over-allocated. It will emit 4700 tons of sulfur
dioxide per year, which will threaten peanut crops
and loblolly, slash and shortleaf pine forests. It
will violate EPA standards for safe air by exceeding
ambient air quality standards for fine particulate
matter in Early County, and will emit nitrogen oxide,
which causes smog, acid rain and health problems.
The plant will emit nine million tons of C02 per
year, the equivalent of adding 1.3 million cars to
Georgia's roads.
Currently coal generates about half of the elec
tricity in the country. Given our coal reserves, it
might look like a good option for fulfilling our
future electricity needs, but using coal to generate
power becomes locally and globally expensive if the
terms of the cost-benefit analysis are broadened to
include issues related to air quality, water use and
global climate change.
I have a personal stake in halting progress that is
defined as a coal-fired power plant in Early County—
both because my relatives will be directly impacted
and because I don't want to suffer, and I don't want
anyone else to suffer, the deleterious effects of
energy produced by coal. I also want the forests I remember
from my childhood and continue to hold dear to be preserved.
Many residents of Early County, however, are in favor of the
plant. To them, it promises a little piece of the pie they feel
they are missing while things boom and look glamorous and
bustling up this way and elsewhere. I even know of some folks
in North Georgia who are in favor of the plant, because "coal is
our most plentiful resource, and we need energy."
But I have to wonder whether we aren't capable of creating
better options. I have to wonder what a cost-benefit analysis
that fully incorporates all the costs involved might lead us
to discover. I have to wonder what a vision that merges the
two Georgias and moves beyond them to see one planet might
require us to do. I have to wonder whether we can't create
some better cards before we place our bets.
Ashley David
Ashley David moved to Athens, her ancestral stomping grounds, last year
to write from the place she writes about. Her poems and essays have
appeared in Hanging Loose, Michigan Quarterly Review. Mid-American
Review, The Southern Review, Verse, and WSQ. She teaches at Piedmont
College and runs the Red Clay Wnters’ Workshop for folks from the com
munity.
How much more coal do we want to burn in Georgia to generate electricity?
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