Greenpeace

 

Last Friday, Duke Energy announced its plans to close the W.C. Beckjord Power Station by January 1, 2015, citing upcoming EPA regulations, including the Maximum Achievable Control Technology rule (MACT).  This 60-year-old, unscrubbed plant is located about 20 miles east of Cincinnati and has been emitting 69,156 tons of sulfur dioxide, 4,556 tons of nitrogen oxides, and 4,289,107 tons of carbon dioxide each year in addition to mercury and other hazardous air pollutants.

While I’m encouraged by Duke’s recognition of the “regulatory writing on the wall,” Duke needs to take seriously the health of Cincinnatians and accelerate the retirement of this plant.  In Duke's statement about closing Beckjord, the company only cites the cost “to which their customers will be exposed” from installing pollution control, rather than the toxic emissions to which they are exposed to daily. 

According to the Clean Air Task Force, every year that the Beckjord coal plant operates, it causes 140 deaths, 220 heart attacks, over 2,000 asthma attacks and a host of hospital and emergency room admissions. Waiting until 2015 to close this plant is simply not soon enough, especially when Duke has heard from its customers that human lives are more important than profits.

Over the last three months, our coalition partner Ohio Citizen Action has mailed 2,037 personal letters to Jim Rogers, Duke Energy CEO, urging him to close the Beckjord power plant, including cute but deadly serious drawings by children.  

“Duke’s customers have sent the company a clear message that they want it to move away from its reliance on dirty coal plants,”said Rachael Belz, Coal Program Organizer at Ohio Citizen Action.

I agree.  Instead of taking a proactive approach and closing Beckjord immediately, Duke Energy is waiting until the absolute last minute before they have to comply with the new EPA rules. By delaying closure of the Beckjord coal-fired power plant, Duke Energy is making a clear statement that their profits are more important than the health of the citizens of Cincinnati.

Greenpeace will continue to keep the pressure on Duke Energy about Beckjord as well as the nearby Miami Fort Station, located about 16 miles west of Cincinnati. The Miami Fort coal plant shares many of the same characteristics as the Beckjord Station in that it is old, polluting, and will soon become prohibitively expensive to run.

Cincinnatians deserve clean air and they deserve it now.

The people have spoken and won’t be ignored: We’ve got to stop coal and mountain-top removal mining now.

We know that coal kills and leaves a deadly legacy throughout its entire life cycle. Destroyed mountains, poisoned water, filled valleys, sludge and ash impoundments, global warming pollution, asthma, and cancer are all gifts of mining and burning coal. 

But the people are standing up. As Greenpeace continues its Coal Free Future Tour this month, our allies in Kentucky are also showing their love for mountains, clean air and water this Valentine’s Day.

Today marks day four of an inspiring sit-in in Governor Beshear’s office in Frankfort, KY. Fourteen Kentucky Rising activists including author Wendell Berry are spending the nights on floors and chairs, occupying the governor’s office to demand that he end the destructive, poisoning practice of mountain-top removal mining.

This sit-in comes after numerous meetings with the governor asking him to stop the destruction that is coal mining. The governor has responded by downright ignoring the will of the people. Last fall, Governor Beshear sued the EPA to keep them from trying to protect the water around mining sites! Clearly, it was time for the people to rise up.

Mickey McCoy, one of the protesters, was just in Wilmington, NC inspiring activists to rise up there.  It’s plain to see why he does this.

People in Appalachia and around coal-fired power plants all across the country are being killed. Asthma, cancer and heart disease are not just a “cost of doing business.” People are sick and tired of being poisoned while coal companies make billions in profits. We must make a choice: people’s lives or polluter’s profits. There is clearly a right and wrong here. And it’s electrifying to see the people of Kentucky standing up for what is right.

You can hear acclaimed author, Jeff Biggers interview some of the other inspiring activists here.

I am not the only one who agrees with the activists sitting-in.  Adding support to the movement were hundreds rallying outside the governor’s office today, “I Love Mountains Day.” Continuing on last year’s tradition, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth sponsored the day that brought hundreds to the capital to say “No More!” to coal and mountain top removal mining.

Love is standing up for what is right.

I, for one, am feeling the love this Valentine’s Day.

Just the other week, the United Nations Framework on Climate Change (UNFCC) concluded its meeting in Cancun, and, to no one's surprise, it was business as usual. The UNFCC shut out the voices of indigenous people and youth as they tried to represent peoples who are disproportionately affected by climate change. They even prevented members of the media from reporting on these events.
Help us by joining the fight.

Friday, October 22 at an Ohio TV station debate, I questioned both OH-18 Congressional District candidates, Zack Space and Bob Gibbs, on the fact that they've taken huge contributions from the coal industry. How could they support the energy revolution we need when they both take money from the coal industry?

Check out the video, my question begins at minute 41:

Wow! Not only did they both completely dodge the question, but Mr. Space claimed there’s such a thing as “clean coal” and Mr. Gibbs DENIED GLOBAL WARMING.

I wonder if it’s because both of them have indeed taken huge sums of money from the coal industry. How much money, you ask?

Zack Space - $174,050 (since 2006)
Bob Gibbs - $27,499 (2010 campaign)

Ohio is full of candidates running for election on November 2nd who’ve taken money from the coal industry and their employees and PACs . Here’s just a short list:

Rob Portman - $32,250 (2010 campaign)
Lee Fisher - $35,900 (2010 campaign)

Steve Stivers - $46,700 (2010 campaign)
Mary Jo Kilroy - $7,300 (since 2008)

Pat Tiberi - $250,406 (since 2001)
Paul Brooks -  $6,800 (2010 campaign)

The good news is that they are all being called out. A letter to the editor in one of Ohio’s biggest newspaper, the Columbus Dispatch, called on Tiberi, Space and Kilroy to “give back every penny of the coal industry’s dirty money”.

And Wednesday, the Stivers campaign, Kilroy campaign, Fisher campaign, and Portman campaign were all the recipients of large novelty checks from some well-dressed “Coal CEOs”. These checks showed the contributions each candidates had taken from dirty energy companies. We made sure they knew that taking money for polluting industry means they aren’t listening to the people!

We had a blast delivering the huge checks, but at the Ohio Republican Party office where the Stivers campaign was headquartered, we weren't greeted warmly - to say the least! A staffer cracked the door just enough to squeeze his head out and demand to know what we wanted. He  had no interest in hearing that we were bringing the Stiver’s campaign funding from the coal industry, he just told us to leave. We were able to talk to him just long enough to hand off the huge novelty check for the Stivers Campaign! Hmmm...some campaigns just don’t like to hear from their “donors,” I guess!!

Also, at the Kilroy campaign headquarters the staff refused to accept their check from the coal industry “CEOs” claiming that Kilroy wasn't taking dirty energy money.  Well that's not what campaign filings say!

Is your politician's ear being bought off by the coal and oil industry?  Check DirtyEnergyMoney.org or OpenSecrets.org and call them out, too!

 

I first heard about the danger of chlorine gas when I was growing up in South Carolina. There was a train wreck in a small rural town called Graniteville. As if the tragedy of the wreck alone wasn't enough, one of the cars in the train was carrying deadly chlorine gas. The gas inevitably leaked out making a toxic cloud that killed at least nine people and sent over 550 people to the hospital.

Killed a person from inhaling a gas? I couldn’t imagine what a death like that would feel like. I found out that chlorine gas reacts with the water in your eyes, mouth, throat, and lungs and forms a hydrochloric acid that literally dissolves your tissue from the inside out. Images of gas masks and the trenches of World War I come to mind.

But this wasn’t some trench in Germany during the 1910s.  

Today, many manufacturing plants, wastewater treatment plants, and other facilities in our communities use deadly toxins like chlorine gas. When I moved to Columbus, Ohio last month I found out that there are nearly 300 facilities that use deadly chemicals in the buckeye state, alone. Across the country, over 100 million people are put at risk due to a chemical plant in their community. What would happen if there was a spill or accident at one of these plants? What if some mal-intentioned person actually attacked one of these facilities?

I had to find out what was going on in my city of Columbus, so I asked the manager of our local wastewater treatment plant, Gary Hickman to come speak at a meeting of concerned citizens. His news was indeed encouraging!  The wastewater treatment plant where Gary works, Jackson Pike, didn’t even use dangerous chemicals like chlorine gas!

Gary told us that they had stopped using the deadly chemical chlorine in the mid-1990s when they went through an upgrade at the plant. He said it was too much of a danger for his workers and for the people who lived near the plant. Good thing, too, because by switching to safer chemicals to disinfect, Gary eliminated a risk to 57,000 people!

I couldn’t believe it. If it were possible to eliminate these risks, why hadn’t all plants? One of the plants I lived near made itself safer, but what about the others?

It is irresponsible for these facilities not to eliminate such an unnecessary risk, especially when so many plants have proven that making the switch to safer chemicals is feasible and in the best interest of our communities.  That’s why so many people in Ohio are banding together to tell Senator Brown not to listen to chemical industry lobbyists and to listen to the people of Ohio. We have already made hundreds of calls to his office and we will be meeting with his staff in a few weeks.

Help us by taking action now to tell Senator Brown to make your community safe from a chemical disaster.

Let’s eliminate this UNNECESSARY risk!

If you would like more information about the real danger of using chlorine gas or want to get involved in helping others understand these dangers, check out Greenpeace's toxics page.