Friday, December 2, 2011
Environment PC&E rolls over for SWEPCO again
Posted by Max Brantley on Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 1:13 PM
You'll be shocked, I'm sure, to learn that the Arkansas Pollution Control and Ecology Commission went with pollution and against ecology again today in approving a wastewater permit for SWEPCO's Turk Plant, nearing completion in Hempstead County despite pending challenges by the Sierra Club. Unanimous vote.
Comments (6)
Showing 1-6 of 6
Again, let's not forget the boss of APC&E sleeps with the utility companies. Take a bow guv.
I'm sure Texas consumers will enjoy Ark-produced electricity esp since they forbade the same company the right to pollute their state with dirty coal fumes and filthy water flowing into their air and waterways.
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eLwood, when you and all the other antis quit buying and using fuel from Texas that pollutes the Natural State then I will know you are doing more than mouthing and are deadly serious on your position. Agreed? (Louie is too busy writing about the Hogs to defend his territorial domain.)
I can see a major department of Arkansas government that needs to be eliminated since they don't even seem to know what their job is. Eliminate them and quit the charade that we really care about The Natural State actually being "natural".
Most of my fuel comes from Canada for the internal combustion engines I use a couple of times per week. Some of it comes from Venezuela, some Saudi Arabia, little of it, if any comes from Tejas. They don't produce much anymore or didn't you see the notice that USA reached Peak Oil back in 1975? Besides, last time I looked Tejas was shipping most of their stuff to England for higher prices.
My natural gas comes from the Boston Mtn wells, dug 20-25 years ago. Some of it comes from sweetie's well on their Madison county property. Checks are getting pretty damn small though.
Cato, be sure and leave your grandkids a few notes for 25 yrs hence explaining why it was necessary to build a coal-fired plant down there. You needn't mention the mercury and other stuff they've accumulated in their bodies.
I know folks on both sides of this issue who are down in the trenches. But I can't get over the disgusting impression that SWEPCO has finally written the playbook for how incessant whining, bulk tee-shirt campaigns, expensive PR (including one-note obnoxious bloggers), and sheer corporate chutzpah have managed to inflict the single most obscene environmental insult on Arkansas since Vertac. Even after a string of losses in state and federal courts, SWEPCO continues to construct its contested plant. Of course, now they're saying they are so close to completion we might as well suffer it to be so. This kind of litigation strategy is not supposed to work (at least according to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals), but apparently it's compelling enough for the Arkansas regulators.
Another gripe: When the Public Service Commission issued its 2-1 decision in favor of SWEPCO's Certificate of Need (which was eventually reversed by Arkansas's highest courts), a separate concurrence deferred to ADEQ and PC&E on environmental issues, in particular greenhouse gas emissions. What wasn't acknowledged by the PSC or the press in its coverage of this dispute is that PC&E passed a 1999 regulation that declared that carbon dioxide (the benchmark greenhouse gas) was not an "air pollutant" under state law. ADEQ and PC&E are just now getting around to correcting this obvious legal and scientific mistake. Once again, SWEPCO slips the leash.
SWEPCO just gave Arkansas the middle finger again! How many times will it take before people realize those jobs we were promised go mostly to people who live in Texarkana TEXAS, not on the Arkansas side? Who wants to live in Texarkana, Arkansas, with some of the worst schools in the state AND high crime? No one with a relatively good paying job will be interested in living in Hope, McNab, Ashdown (so appropriately named) or TXK. Bowie County, here come the jobs!
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