At a time when utilities across the world are implementing smart energy initiatives such as smart meters, private consortium of electric cooperatives called Power4Georgians (P4G) is planning to build an 850-megawatt coal-fired plant in Georgia’s Ben Hill County.  This would be P4G’s second proposed plant in the state.  The cost to build both coal-burning plants is conservatively estimated to be more than $4.6 billion.

Environmental opponents of the plan, including Deborah Sheppard, executive director of Altamaha Riverkeeper, say the coal burning plants would use huge amounts of water resources while polluting nearby rivers.

“If proposed Plant Ben Hill is anything like its cousin in middle Georgia, Plant Washington, we can expect more than a hundred pounds of mercury to enter our air every year from this plant,” Sheppard says. “Much of this mercury would further contaminate the fish and our families in the Altamaha River basin.”

The potential pollution would not be localized. “Large-scale coal combustion at the headwaters of the Satilla River would create mercury pollution which would be deposited throughout the Satilla watershed,” explains John Carswell, acting executive director of Satilla Riverkeeper. “If they build a coal-fired plant in Ben Hill County, I don’t know if folks around here will be able to eat anything out of the Satilla.”

News of the planned construction at Ben Hill became public after Allied Energy Services president Dean Alford, who is also a spokesman for P4G, told members of the Fall-line Alliance for a Clean Environment (FACE) that he was developing Plant Ben Hill as well as Plant Washington.

Flint Riverkeeper executive director Gordon Rogers says water resources should not be squandered. “Waste at the faucet or wasting clean water by polluting it threatens our businesses, our families and our culture.”

Georgia’s waterways have unique characteristics that convert inorganic mercury spewed from coal plants into the neurotoxin methylmercury which becomes concentrated in fish. Coal ash also contains other dangerous pollutants such as arsenic, lead, and selenium. Ironically, the United States’ Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced its intention to declare coal ash hazardous waste.

Mary Carr Bendeck of the regional Southern Alliance for Clean Energy says the economics of coal increasingly do not make financial sense. “As a national security matter, it makes a lot more sense to invest in local clean-energy jobs such as weatherization retrofits and energy efficiency. The price of coal plants continues to increase while the cost of clean energy alternatives is decreasing. There are lots of good, clean-energy options that would do more to help Georgia’s economy and keep us secure.”

FACE president Katherine Cummings adds, “I haven’t seen data that show that even one of these plants is needed given that more people are energy efficient with Energy Star appliances, home insulation, and conservation.”

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