 |
| The lovely and warm-fuzzy Morgan Griffith. |
"When they spend billions of dollars, we're going to pay every penny of that. It's a huge cost, and it's all because of the EPA." (Story here.)
What's "all because of the EPA" in this instance is the closing of a 90-year-old, coal-fired electric generation facility in Giles County that will be shuttered because it is so out of date and is a heavy polluter of the air. And yes, AEP will have to pay a lot of money to replace the facility and to convert another to natural gas, but I don't quite see how that is the EPA's fault any more than putting a thief in jail is the cop's fault.
Appalachian Power says your electric bill will go up 10 percent or so in the next three years (begging the question: would it not go up without this closing?) and the EPA says the closing of this type of plant across the nation will save nearly 20,000 lives. Ponder: 20,000 lives; 10 percent increase. Hmmmmm. Are we pro-life or pro-pollution? That's the choice. Griffith's choice obviously is pollution.
The EPA was established to protect us from polluters who were--are--ruining our air and water. Polluters are not less dangerous if they aren't forced to do things they don't want to because it costs a lot of money and diminishes profits. But that's what nutcases like Griffith would have us believe. This is the guy who won his seat by convincing voters that cleaning up the environment by requiring certain actions from the coal industry was bad for the voters.
What Griffith is also not telling you is that this nasty air in our beautiful part of the work has a huge economic--and jobs--cost. The word on the street is that several large facilities have decided not to locate in our region because of the air quality and because of the coal used by our largest utility. Now that is a real cost.
I seem to recall that my brother, a recently retired AEP employee who worked at Glen Lyn, told me that the plant has been shuttered for much of the last couple of years because electricity demand wasn't high enough due to the recession. Big power customers (VOLVO,etc) had cut back their usage.
ReplyDeleteSo I'm not sure why permanently shuttering will have a dramatic effect. They have known that they need to replace the aging facility for years. It's 92 years old for goodness sake, the oldest power plant on the east coast. If they haven't planned for that, then perhaps they became too complacent over the years as they wallowed in their electric monopoly.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeletePlease let me know if you're looking for a article writer for your site. You have some really good posts and I think I would be a good asset. If you ever want to take some of the load off, I'd really
ReplyDeletelike to write some material for your blog in exchange for
a link back to mine. Please send me an e-mail if interested.
Regards!
Also see my page > tattoo removal
I'm really impressed along with your writing skills as well as with the structure in your weblog. Is this a paid subject matter or did you customize it your self? Either way keep up the nice high quality writing, it is uncommon to see a nice blog like this one these days..
ReplyDeleteMy blog post :: how To lose man boobs fast