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Monday, Oct. 05, 2009

Meetings to discuss Plant Washington

The Environmental Protection Division is holding a public meeting Tuesday in Sandersville to answer questions about permits for a new coal-fired power plant north of Sandersville.

Power4Georgians, a coalition of six electric cooperatives, applied for environmental permits to build Plant Washington last year. In August, the EPD issued draft permits setting parameters for how the plant operates and how much water and air pollution it can legally produce.

The project aligns with Washington County’s strategy to replace disappearing jobs from the kaolin industry, but it has attracted opposition from some local residents and environmental groups across the state.

The Georgians for Smart Energy coalition has arranged for additional meetings to be held in cities across the state, including Macon, where court reporters will record people’s comments to provide the EPD. Midge Sweet, director of the coalition, said more than 1,000 Georgians have written the EPD requesting that meetings be held in cities besides Sandersville, with no response.

The Macon meeting will be from 6 to 8 p.m. Tuesday at the Joshua Cup coffee house.

Either Plant Washington or the proposed Plant Longleaf in Early County are likely to be the first coal-fired power plant built in Georgia in decades.

The Longleaf plant had been the subject of a lawsuit by environmental groups that sought to block its permits. An appeals court upheld most aspects of the permitting process, and the Georgia Supreme Court just voted not to hear the case.

At issue are the types of technology power plants are forced to consider and whether their carbon dioxide emissions, which contribute to global warming, should be limited. Georgia courts have ruled otherwise, but the EPA has issued new guidance and announced new policy in the past week that might affect those issues. The EPA said power plant proposals should consider cleaner gasification technology, and the agency has also announced it will move ahead of Congress to regulate carbon dioxide emissions.

Justine Thompson, executive director of Greenlaw, an Atlanta legal firm that had sued to stop Plant Longleaf, said her group is filing a motion to reconsider, given some of the new EPA policy guidance. The outcome could affect plans for Plant Washington, too.

Dean Alford, whose company Allied Energy Services is developing the power plant, said he believes most local residents support the project. Power4Georgians has hosted two public meetings and two career fairs, spoken to about 35 community groups, and made more than 50 visits to the homes of concerned residents, Alford said.

Billy Helton is a neighbor with a well that provides his family drinking water and irrigates his farm, and at first he was “somewhat skeptical” about the plant, he said. He was concerned that it might affect ground water levels or be ugly enough to devalue his land.

But Power4Georgians took Helton and other neighbors to visit a coal-fired power plant in South Carolina that uses technology like what Power4Georgians is proposing. Helton said he was impressed by how clean that plant was, by the fact that the pollution reduction portion of the plant was larger than the power generation part, and by the economic development going on around the plant.

“The way the economy is, I can’t see why anybody would be against it,” he said.

Alford said he thinks the plant enjoys wide support in Washington County because the company has been so open. “But you can meet and answer questions for 300 years and not convince some people.”

Sweet expressed surprise at the anger she’s heard at previous meetings toward nonresidents who oppose the project.

“The state’s national resources are all of ours,” she said. “Surrounding counties will not get the financial benefit of the plant, only the pollution.”

Tuesday’s meeting is at 6 p.m. at the Ridge Road Elementary School cafeteria in Sandersville. The EPD will hold an official public hearing about the permits at the same time and place Oct. 20. Written comments may be submitted until Oct. 27 to The Georgia Environmental Protection Division, 2 Martin Luther King Drive, Suite 1152, East Tower, Atlanta GA 30334.

The Telegraph archive contributed to this report. To contact writer S. Heather Duncan, call 744-4225.