Macon Telegraph
April 04, 2012

Officials with the Georgia Department of Public Health decided this week it will gather all available information about pollution from Plant Scherer in Juliette and its potential health effects on nearby residents.

This “scoping document” would identify what information might still be needed to understand the public health impact of the plant. It could be the first step toward an in-depth public health assessment of Scherer’s impacts, with recommendations for action, said Carla Coley, environmental director for the North Central Health District.  Read the full article here.

CNN Radio
April 01, 2012

Juliette, Georgia (CNN) -- "Y'know they're going to tear that house down, don't you?"

Robert Maddox has just opened his front door to let me in for the third time in three weeks. During each visit, Maddox talks about the house next door. It looks like the other houses in this rural middle Georgian town: two stories high, with a stone face and long rooftop arches, sitting on a few acres of wooded hills.

Maddox turns toward his dining room, walking by the oxygen tank he uses when he makes the 300-foot trek to the two-lane road where he picks up his mail, and shares the gossip he heard at the local market an hour earlier.

"Yeah, someone said Georgia Power will tear it down to the ground sometime this week."

Robert Maddox is a bulky man with gray hair, a deeply lined face, squinty eyes and a thick Southern accent. He lives in Juliette with his wife, Teresa. The two of them invested their life savings building their home. It's a large ranch house on several acres, and the plan was the two of them would leave it for their sons and grandchildren. They gave up that dream after Maddox's mother developed a rare form of ear cancer and died after living at the home for three years.

"I'm not going to bring my grandchildren up in this," Maddox says. "Anybody who does would be a fool, I think."

The problem, Maddox explains, is now he and his neighbors are getting sick. For Maddox, the first signs of trouble would come in the middle of the night, when he would wake up with nose bleeds mixed with clear mucus. Then his muscles started twitching, and then he got kidney disease, and then sclerosis of the liver.   Read the full article here.

Over $800,000 Funneled to Ex-Cobb Energy Insider
Southern Alliance for Clean Energy
January 09, 2012

Marietta, GA. – New research released today from Southern Alliance for Clean Energy exposes the trail of money from Washington EMC members’ pockets to Dean Alford, former Cobb Energy executive and close business associate of indicted Cobb EMC ex-chief Dwight Brown. It also raises questions about benefits to one Washington County family.

The five EMCs (Washington EMC, Central Georgia EMC, Snapping Shoals EMC, Upson EMC, and Cobb EMC) funneled at least $27 million to Alford via the POWER4Georgians (P4G) consortium of EMCs, which hired Alford’s company, Allied Energy Services, with a no-bid contract to build two controversial coal-fired power plants in central Georgia. Washington EMC’s share is at least $842,000, meaning it has spent roughly $56 per member. Cobb EMC opted on January 24 to discontinue funding P4G, leaving many questioning the remaining four EMCs’ continuing role and financial burden.

The “Follow the Money” research also highlights the role of Hugh Tarbutton, Sr., whose family owns the railroad line that would carry coal to the proposed Sandersville-area plant, Plant Washington. Tarbutton stands to gain a lucrative coal-carrying contract; he also owns the land the plant would be built on and serves on the Washington County Development Authority, which may back Plant Washington with bonds.

“Members have been asking Washington EMC for years how Dean Alford has spent their money, and hit a wall of silence,” said Amelia Shenstone, Georgia Coal Organizer for the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, which compiled the research. “There’s no evidence that the EMCs themselves even know how the spending breaks down. If Hugh Tarbutton sells Power4Georgians his land at the same rate they paid his neighbors, he’ll make eleven times the market value of the land – EMCs and members need to know the justification for those transactions.”

Washington EMC member Katherine Cummings added, “I don’t know where my money is going in this process. It is a sure bet that Dean Alford knows. That’s a big problem. For EMC co-ops, the members are the regulators – if we, as members, can’t more clearly see what’s going on, how can we make sure we don’t get in the same mess that Cobb EMC got itself into?”

Dean Alford worked for now-indicted Dwight Brown as a Vice President of Cobb Energy, and kept his job even though his projects lost about $11 million over 5 years. Allied Energy Services, a former Cobb Energy subsidiary, helped create POWER4Georgians, which then turned around and gave a no-bid contract to Allied. Cobb Energy was the ill-fated, for-profit affiliate of Cobb EMC; Dwight Brown, who was CEO of both companies, allegedly used the for-profit to steal from Cobb EMC members. Dean Alford once owned $750,000 in preferred Cobb Energy stock.

Cobb EMC’s new directors have indicated they will conduct a forensic audit to investigate the business arrangements behind P4G and other EMC affairs. Washington EMC, Central GeorgiaEMC, Snapping Shoals EMC, and Upson EMC are currently still invested in this risky business proposition. Questions remain about whether they intend to push ahead with this year’s installment to P4G, though several have indicated they are re-evaluating their roles in the power plant projects.

The Georgians for Smart Energy coalition continues to advocate that all the EMCs in P4G conduct a thorough analysis of their needs for new generation in light of reduced power demand trends and a stagnant economy, as well as a comprehensive assessment of alternative options including energy efficiency and renewable energy.  Read the article here.

December 12, 2011
Longleaf Defeat Marks End to Nation’s Longest Running Fight Against Coal Plant
Agreement Marks Milestone of 160 Coal Plants Canceled

Atlanta, GA - The country’s longest-running campaign against construction of a new coal plant ended today as LS Power, a New Jersey-based power company, announced that it will cancel plans to build the Longleaf Energy Station in Blakely, GA. Sierra Club, Friends of the Chattahoochee and GreenLaw have been organizing against the Longleaf coal plant since it was first proposed in 2001. This victory comes as part of a legal agreement between LS Power and Sierra Club.

This victory marks the 160th proposed coal plant canceled since Sierra Club launched its Beyond Coal campaign in 2005. This victory is particularly noteworthy because the struggle lasted for a decade and involved numerous hearings and appeals, and sustained local opposition by hundreds of Georgia residents. Longleaf was one of the very first plants proposed when, in 2001, the coal industry attempted to block clean energy development by building more than 150 new coal plants across the US, a move which would have effectively locked the nation into dependence on coal-fired electricity for the foreseeable future. Longleaf was one of the last remaining new coal projects proposed anywhere in the United States, counting 160 proposals that have now been defeated or abandoned in the past decade.  Read more here and here and here.

The Marietta Daily Journal
January 11, 2012

WASHINGTON — The most detailed data yet on emissions of heat-trapping gases show that U.S. power plants are responsible for the bulk of the pollution blamed for global warming.

Power plants released 72 percent of the greenhouse gases reported to the Environmental Protection Agency for 2010, according to information released Wednesday that was the first catalog of global warming pollution by facility. The data include more than 6,700 of the largest industrial sources of greenhouse gases, or about 80 percent of total U.S. emissions. 

According to an Associated Press analysis of the data, 20 mostly coal-fired power plants in 15 states account for the top-releasing facilities.

Gina McCarthy, the top air official at the EPA, said the database marked “a major milestone” in the agency’s work to address climate change. She said it would help industry, states and the federal government identify ways to reduce greenhouse gases. 

The Obama administration plans to regulate emissions of heat-trapping gases under existing law. A proposed regulation to address pollution from new power plants could be released as early as this month. Eventually, the EPA will have to tackle facilities already in operation. The largest emitters will be the first in line. 

The largest greenhouse gas polluter in the nation in 2010, according to the EPA’s data, was the Scherer power plant in Juliette owned by Atlanta-based Southern Company. That coal-fired power plant reported releasing nearly 23 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas, in 2010.

Two other power plants owned by Southern were the second- and third-largest polluters nationally: the Bowen plant in Cartersville and the James H. Miller Jr. power plant in Quinton, Ala. The plants are some of the largest coal-fired power plants in the country. 

American Electric Power, another large coal-fired power producer, has three power plants in the top 20. They are in Rockport, Ind., Cheshire, Ohio, and St. Albans, W.Va.

“This is just another way to identify the largest coal-fired power plants in the country,” said AEP spokesman Pat Hemlepp. “We always assumed we would be No. 1 in greenhouse gas emissions or No. 2 behind Southern Co. AEP and Southern are the two largest consumers of coal.”

Both companies are testing technology to capture carbon dioxide from power plants and pump it underground for storage. But to date, no one has proven that is possible for a commercial-sized power plant. 

The other states with high-polluting power plants are Texas, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wyoming, North Carolina, Kansas and Kentucky.

Refineries were the second-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, with 5.7 percent of the reported total. The top states in greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and from refineries were Texas, Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio, and Indiana.

Congress required industries to report their greenhouse gas emissions as part of a 2008 spending bill. Until now, the agency has estimated greenhouse gas emissions by industry sector.

“The information is sure to make companies, localities and specific plants more conscious of their emissions profile and may lead some to lower emissions themselves,” said Paul Bledsoe, senior advisor at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington think tank that works on energy and environmental issues. 

Environmental groups welcomed the release of the information Wednesday.

“EPA has scored a touchdown for the public’s right to know about the nation’s largest industrial climate pollution sources,” said Paul Zalzal, staff attorney at Environmental Defense Fund.

That’s how long the coal plant proposed for Ben Hill County would operate − a span of time running over three generations – our lives, our children’s lives, our grandchildren’s lives.

And make no mistake – it would transform our county.  This is an enormous decision.

Before most of us who live here had heard anything about a coal plant, an Atlanta company had quietly bought up more than 3,000 acres of Ben Hill County.

They bought this land under the name of Ben Hill Timberland, a name suggesting the land was intended to be a tree farm, not a heavy industrial site in the midst of what has been farmland from the beginning of our county’s history – where many farms have been owned by the same families for generations.

Power4Georgians, the company developing the plant, claims this coal plant would create jobs and generate tax revenue to solve our economic problems.  They claim we don’t need to worry about negative impacts on public health.  They say we don’t need to worry about impacts on our groundwater and rivers.

This website’s purpose is to shed light on what is sales pitch and what is fact.  It aims to help our residents invest just a little of their time to gain a meaningful understanding of the enormous impacts the proposed coal plant would have on our families’ health and our county’s heritage and lifestyle.

This website is presented by a local group of concerned citizens.  We call ourselves the Wiregrass Energy Network – WEN.

We recognize our county's difficult economic situation.  We’ve carefully analyzed the facts about Plant Ben Hill, and we’ve concluded the dangers are real and significant, and the would-be benefits are highly questionable.  

We realize there are no easy solutions to attracting employers to Ben Hill County, but it is the job and the duty of our elected officials to attract employers that will not poison our air, water, and soil and that will not sicken our children. 

Is it too late for a change of course?  NO.

But we need to understand that if we citizens don’t make ourselves heard, the coal plant will happen.  We must exercise our rights and our power as residents, taxpayers and voters to tell our elected officials NO.