Politicians at the state and local level in Pennsylvania believe the residents should roll over and play dead when companies push for waste coal power plants. Some politicians take it for granted that we already have. However, waste coal power plants increase the amount of fly ash and other particulates in the air and the amount of mercury and arsenic the water. We, the people, must care about what happens to the environment, to the air we breathe and the water we drink. People living in Pennsylvania need to paraphrase John Paul Jones and need to constantly remind both elected and appointed officials:
We Have Not Begun to Fight:
Battling Polluting Waste Coal Plants In Western Pennsylvania
Many years of mining in Pennsylvania created large areas of waste coal, called gob piles. This is the Beech Hollow gob pile, just outside of McDonald, as seen from the western side (photo taken winter 2008):
Here's what the Beech Hollow gob pile looks like from space, courtesy of Google Earth (photo taken late summer 2005):
The large glob of gray to the west of 980 (Robinson Highway) is the largest gob pile east of the Mississippi. It's in our backyard. Granted, it's an ugly mess, but in its current state, it isn't adding to the particulate problem in Southwestern Pennsylvania. However, if you live in places like North Fayette Towship, Oakdale, Carnegie, and Mount Lebanon, you live downwind of a proposed coal waste power plant for Beech Hollow, that will make electricity from the waste coal in this gob pile while spewing fly ash into the air.
For many years, Pittsburgh has been at or near the top of cities with the most particulate-polluted air (check the air for your zip code at StateoftheAir). Despite this fact, the supervisors of Robinson Township (Washington County) have already granted permission for this waste coal plant to be built in their town. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection appears to be going along, but not all the permits are in order. This type of plant will only make a bad air quality situation worse, as anyone with asthma or other lung problems in our region already knows.
If you live in the Pittsburgh area, especially in the western and southern suburbs, you should be mad as hell and let your local officials and the PA Department of Environmental Protection know that you aren't going to take it.
While the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Quality has rescinded approval of the air quality plan
for the waste coal plant, this project is still not completely dead. We need to continue to
fight this.
News
- Robinson Power loses permit, Construction lapsed on coal-fired plant, Post-Gazette, January 28, 2010
- Power company loses permit needed to build plant, Post-Gazette, January 20, 2010
- North Fayette (Supervisor Board) Adopts Resoluteion on Proposed Power Plant, September 9, 2009
- Pittsburgh City Paper - Clearing the Air, September 3, 2009
- Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - West News (search on North Fayette), September 3, 2009
- New Coal Power Plants Being Nixed Across the Country, iStockAnalyst, 2009
- Meeting held on power plant plan: N. Fayette, Robinson watch environment, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 2, 2009
- Letter to the Editor: Plant in Beaver County would damage area's health, economy, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 30, 2009
- North Fayette Sets Meeting on Nearby Planned Power Plant, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 18, 2009 (see presentations from the 6/23/09 meeting)
- Oppose the DEP Permit for a Waste-Coal Power Plant in Robinson Township, Sierra Club Allegheny Group, June 6, 2009
Activism
Reports
Dangers of Fly Ash and Particulates
Mining
Official Documents
Information About Champion Processing, North Branch Energy or Robinson Power Company, LLC
Archival Information
- DEP Says Robinson Plant Must Limit Pollutants, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 17, 2008
- Breaking Ground (large PDF), July-August 2008 - search for Bologna
- Robinson Supervisor Ousted as Treasurer Over Bills, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 12, 2008
- Environmental Integrity Project and Sierra Club's Notification of Intent to Sue Champion Processing/North Branch Energy for Violations of the Clean Air Act, March 3, 2008
- Technical Papers on the Uses of Fly Ash, 1999-2007
- Residents Against the Power Plant (not updated since 2006)
- Pennsylvania Enegery Development Authority (PEDA) report from 2005 (Interesting quote: "The alternative energy
technologies utilized in the selected projects included biologically derived methane, biomass, energy efficiency, fuel cells, recycled energy, solar, waste coal and wind." - lumping waste coal with solar, wind and energy efficiency seems a little odd...)
- Smoldering Debate
Is a waste-coal facility the answer to Robinson Township's problems -- or will residents get burned?, Pittsburgh City Paper, July 28, 2005
- PA DEP Champion Processing Trust CO&A, April 27, 2005
- Spark fading for Pittsburgh area waste coal plants, Pittsburgh Business Times, March 20, 2005
- Flyer published by the Robinson Power Company (large graphic files) Beech Hollow Project pamphlet - outside * * Beech Hollow Project pamphlet - inside
- Pennsylvania's Dirty Coal Power on Its Way Out, Earthope Network, December 2004
- Circulating Fluidized Bed Technology (looks like a very old site from a company that promotes "clean coal" technology)