Proposed Pee Dee Plant Headed to Court

From today's The State. More coverage can be read in the Post and Courier, the Florence Morning News, and Environment News Service.

Groups appeal coal plant permit
Conservationists challenge approval of utility’s proposed energy facility

Tuesday, Apr 14, 2009

By SAMMY FRETWELL
sfretwell@thestate.com

Conservation groups announced Monday they are appealing an air pollution permit for Santee Cooper’s proposed $2.2 billion coal-fired power plant in Florence County.

The legal challenge, filed by the Southern Environmental Law Center for environmentalists, is the latest in a series of hurdles the state-owned utility must clear before it can build the facility along the Great Pee Dee River.

Santee Cooper still needs a string of other environmental permits, including a major federal wetlands permit, state water quality approval and state permits to build a landfill and ash ponds at the site. A federal environmental impact statement, which DHEC chose not to wait on before issuing the permits, also is due out soon and is subject to legal challenge. Those permits and studies could take years to resolve.

Laura Varn, a spokeswoman for Santee Cooper, said the utility expected the legal challenge. But the company needs the plant to produce power, she said.

Santee Cooper, which serves about half the state’s residents, says the facility will be state-of-the-art in controlling pollution. The company hopes to have the plant up and running in 2014, but challenges could delay that.

“We are committed to moving forward as we focus on our balanced solution to meeting the state’s energy needs in an affordable and reliable way,” Varn said.

Conservationists said state regulators didn’t conduct proper studies to see how the plant would affect eastern South Carolina’s environment. The Department of Health and Environmental Control’s decision to approve the permit violates the federal Clean Air Act by authorizing large amounts of pollution, conservation groups claim.

Those appealing the DHEC board’s decision are the S.C. Coastal Conservation League, the Sierra Club, the S.C. Wildlife Federation, the Environmental Defense Fund and the League of Women Voters of South Carolina.

It was not known when a state administrative law judge will hear the appeal.

DHEC’s seven-member board approved the air permit Feb. 12 after saying the utility had met all legal requirements. Department spokesman Thom Berry said the agency doesn’t comment on ongoing legal matters.

In the past two years, criticism of Santee Cooper’s plant has intensified amid a chorus of national opposition to new coal-fired power plants. Gov. Mark Sanford announced in February he opposes the plant, saying there is not enough demand for the power in slow economic times.

Carbon dioxide from coal-burning power plants contributes to global warming. In this case, the plant would release about 10 million tons of carbon dioxide each year. But DHEC, saying it needed guidance from the federal government, did not require any controls on carbon dioxide in the permit it issued to Santee Cooper this year.

The facility also will release mercury and tiny soot particles, which can lodge in people’s lungs and make them sick. The DHEC board’s decision will allow 92 pounds of mercury annually to be released along a river full of fish that already have been polluted by the toxic metal, which is believed to be from industrial sources.

“This plant would add mercury pollution to an already contaminated region ... but DHEC waived the maximum mercury controls required by law,” said Blan Holman, an attorney representing the five groups.

The plant will be along the banks of the Great Pee Dee River near the communities of Kingsburg and Pamplico in Florence County.

Waiting on the Clean Energy Future

Opinion from the Myrtle Beach Sun News:

Most powerful source of energy awaits use
By Angela Lee
Sun, Apr. 05, 2009

What is the solution to America's energy needs in the future? If you ask those who stand to profit from current practices, those in the industry and their buddies in Washington, the answer is drill, drill, drill and mine, mine, mine. It's time to take a smarter approach.

There is only a finite amount of oil and coal contained within our planet. Proposed offshore drilling would pose a serious threat to South Carolina's tourism industry, natural environments and the plant and animal life they contain, and would further contribute to greenhouse gases. The Appalachian area and its inhabitants are currently suffering from out of state companies that come in to mine coal via "mountaintop removal" methods. This action dramatically, and horrifically, scars the landscape, clogs mountain streams, disrupts tap water in homes, and weakens mountain side stability, which has led to landslides in some areas where homes have been affected.

Now is the time to make smart decisions concerning energy. One step in the right direction: The EPA is putting on hold hundreds of mountain top coal-mining permits until it can establish the projects' impacts on streams and wetland. This decision was announced by EPA administrator Lisa Jackson. Under the Clean Water Act, companies cannot release rock, dirt, or debris into streams unless they can prove it will not cause permanent damage to the waterway or any fish and other wildlife it may contain. The EPA also denied two permits to the Army Corps of Engineers that would have allowed companies to fill thousands of feet of streams with mining waste in West Virginia and Kentucky.

Eventually, oil and coal will run out. Meanwhile, we have the most powerful source of energy in our solar system, the sun, waiting for us to utilize it. This is a win-win solution folks. We already have the technology, we just need the foresight and the will to move forward on this initiative. What will solar energy give us? A clean, sustainable, earth friendly source of power and jobs, American jobs, right here at home! Now is the time to make the move to smarter, cleaner energy. Let's not drag our feet on this one. Let's not create a future where our children and grandchildren ask us, why didn't we do more?

State editorial on Efficiency

Sun, Mar. 29, 2009
Lakshmi: Recession changes energy equation
By VENKAT LAKSHMI
Guest Columnist

In a period of less than 48 hours, state regulators approved Santee Cooper’s plan to build a $2.2 billion coal-powered plant near Florence and SCE&G’s plan to add two new reactors to its nuclear plant at Jenkinsville at a cost of around $10 billion.

Environmentalists have raised several valid concerns about both projects. The coal plant will emit carbon dioxide — a greenhouse gas that is the primary cause of global warming — and mercury, which can enter ponds, lakes, streams and rivers, be ingested by fish and eventually enter the human system; exposure to even small amounts can cause neurological disorders in humans. Radioactivity could escape from nuclear reactors into the atmosphere; in addition, a nuclear plant needs enormous amounts of water to turn into steam to drive the turbines, and a water shortage during periods of drought may compromise plant operations.

However the most persuasive argument against these plants may come from dollars and cents.

The United States has one of the highest per capita consumptions of energy in the world. Only oil-producing countries use more energy per capita.

In the past few months, our local, national and global economy has slowed to the point that economic indicators are at the same point as a decade ago. There has been a definite decline in manufacturing; auto parts manufacturers have closed down due to the slowdown in automobile sales. Consumer spending is down across the board. With less industrial demand today than two years ago, is it wise to commit billions of dollars to build these new plants? Or should we wait and see if consumption and energy use go back up and then make a final decision? And shouldn’t everyone be working harder to reduce energy consumption, regardless?

There are numerous ways that factories can improve their efficiency, by reducing their energy consumption during non-peak times. A few ideas that are already being implemented in some places are more efficient lighting, with light bulbs that use less energy and switch off when not required; variable-speed motors, which use high speeds and high energy consumption during peak times and lower consumption during non-peak times; and water recycling.

Households can put lighting, heating and cooling on timing devices that minimize their usage when not required, saving money as well as energy. Combining energy efficiency and cost savings creates a powerful argument that appeals to everyone.

If the economy does not recover to its pre-2008 levels and the energy demands do not increase according to our predictions, we will be faced with the high costs of these plants, which will be transmitted to the consumers in the form of higher costs for every kilowatt of power. Using caution and cost-benefit analysis before embarking on these large construction projects is a wise idea. Twelve billion dollars is nearly twice what the state government spends in a year. Even if we spread this over 10 years, it would come to $1.2 billion, which is about what legislators have cut out of the current year’s state budget.

These are times of grave economic challenges. But with challenge comes opportunity. South Carolina and America must lead the way in energy conservation and efficiency. We need to get the United States off the top per capita energy consumption list — a list we definitely should not head. All these moves will help to delay construction of costly new energy plants and thereby conserve our monetary and energy resources.

The time is now.

Dr. Lakshmi is chair of the Department of Geological Sciences at USC.

From Hydrogen to A World of Home-Grown Alternatives

From this week's Columbia Free Times, a wide ranging look at alternatives to projects like Santee Cooper's proposed coal plant:

Through the prism of a hydrogen atom, the eyes of the nation and the world fall on Columbia and South Carolina for five days beginning Monday.
...

That is good news to South Carolinians getting swept up in economic convulsions of the time. After all, residents of the state average some of the highest power bills in the country. And all in all, South Carolina depends on coal for 61 percent of its electricity and nuclear power for 31 percent of it, a combined 92 percent, according to a state legislative report released in February.

Those numbers could rise.

With ratepayers set up to foot the bills, the train has left the station on plans by state-owned Santee Cooper to build a coal-fired power plant in Florence County and South Carolina Electric & Gas Co., in partnership with Santee Cooper, to construct two more reactors at the V.C. Summer Nuclear Plant that SCE&G owns and operates near Columbia, as well as designs by Duke Energy to bring two additional nuclear reactors online in the Upstate region of South Carolina.

It is true even despite well-documented toxic pollution associated with coal- and nuclear-based power.

In that sense, then, South Carolina finds itself at two roads diverged on a path to the energy future. One road bends toward a dark past — the black seam of coal and the thousands of lifetimes of radioactive waste that is nuclear. The other way leads to a sort of last-place-to-first-place story waiting to be told:

In the affluent Heathwood neighborhood of Columbia, where drafty old mansions hold fast but inefficient, and across rural swaths of the Palmetto State, where row after row of poorly insulated manufactured homes stretch out upon the land.

In hydrogen laboratories at the university and other research and development operations in the state, where the vision of Oppenheimer has evolved from splitting the atom for extinction-level purposes to tapping the most bountiful element in the universe for its clean-energy potential.

Along the sleepy back roads of the state in forested fields and other agricultural assets, where grow enormous, renewable sources of biofuels.

Off the coast, where Mother Nature whistles strong winds atop the mighty Atlantic Ocean.
And in the sunny climate of South Carolina, where a virtually limitless solar source shines silently, lingering to be harnessed.

It is fitting then, as the city, state, nation and world hone in on hydrogen, to consider other options along with it. “I don’t think there’s any single silver bullet,” says John Clark, director of the S.C. Energy Office. “I think the key is going to be having greater diversity in energy sources than we have.”

read more...

Just how much clean energy potential does South Carolina have? Part of the answer comes from this study by the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. It busts the myth that the Southeast -- and South Carolina -- doesn't have enough renewable energy. It shows that our state has enough clean energy to power 15% of the state over the near term -- long term the potential to power ourselves from home-grown energy resources is greater than all the energy we use today.