March 24th, 2009
By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
Environmentalists, community activists and some state legislators are calling for a temporary moratorium on coal plants in Texas, where 12 coal-fired power plants are proposed.
The opponents gathered at the capitol in Austin on Tuesday, saying that halting construction of the plants would help fight climate change and protect the health of local communities by cutting out coal’s toxic wastes and emissions, according to advocacy group Public Citizen.
“The evidence is now abundantly clear: Climate change is already affecting Texans and impacts will only increase in severity if we fail to act quickly. Texas already leads the nation in global warming gases. If we were our own country, Texas would rank eighth in the world among carbon emitters,” said Tom “Smitty” Smith, director of Public Citizen’s Texas office, in a press release.
“If all 12 of our proposed coal and pet-coke fired power plants were built, Texas would emit an additional 77 million tons of carbon dioxide,” Smith said, adding that capturing 90 percent of those emissions through a process known as “carbon sequestration” is ”feasible with current technologies.”
The problem with carbon sequestration has been that existing coal operations find the technology too expensive, and consequently, there are no such “clean coal” operations.
Activists in Texas are targeting proposed new coal plants (and pet-coke plants which burn a byproduct of oil refining) because they’d like the state to hold them to a higher standard.
Two legislators have proposed bills that would require coal companies to ante up for sequestration. Each bill – Senate Bill 126, by state Sen. Rodney Ellis, and its companion bill in the house, House Bill 4384 by Rep. Allen Vaught — would place a temporary moratorium on coal-fired power plants that lack carbon “capture and sequestration” technology.
Among those opposing new coal plants that operate in the same way as existing “dirty” plants, are many health advocates. Robert M. Malina, Ph.D, a Bay City resident representing a group opposing the White Stallion pet-coke plant, says lead- and mercury-laced coal pollution takes a heavy toll on the human body, even before one considers its impact on global warming.
“My main concern is the potential influence of emissions from these coal-fired plants on childhood development. Our children are our future and their health and well-being should not be compromised. Both mercury and lead cause irreversible mental and physical health problems in children,” Malina said in the Public Citizen news release.
“What’s more, elevated mortality from lung cancer and increased prevalence of asthma are associated with coal-fired power plants emitting sulfur dioxide, nitrous dioxide and particulate matter. Everyone living near these plants or within reach of prevailing winds will be subjected to these health risks.”
The White Stallion Energy Center website touts the new plant as having “the most environmentally advanced, cleanest, commercially proven, emission lowering technology available”. The plant could supply energy for 650,000 homes and would be “much cleaner” than older generation coal plants, the website reports.
Another supporter of a Texas coal plant moratorium, Roger Landress, represents the Clean Economy Coalition of Corpus Christi, which opposes the Las Brisas Power Plant slated to be built in the Corpus Christi Bay.
The plant, which was the subject of a protest march in February, has “no plans to sequester the 10.4 million tons of carbon dioxide it proposes to put into the atmosphere each year, (and) will almost double the EPA regulated air pollutants in our city,” Landress said.
“Corpus Christi is already dealing with the environmental and health effects of being a refining town and this addition would likely push our county into non-attainment for ozone and sulfur dioxide,” he added.
For more information on pending coal plants in Texas or any state, see the Sierra Club’s coal plant directory.
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