Coal plants are a step in the wrong direction?

By | October 29, 2009

Guest Blog by Luke Wilson, Jasmine Woods, and Jaqueline Stogner

The recent drought and influx of people in SC has caused the state-owned utility company, Santee Cooper,http://postandcourier.media.clients.ellingtoncms.com/img/photos/2008/07/02/Santee_Cooper_t600.jpg? to propose the construction of two 660-megawatt coal-fired power plants in Florence County in order to keep up with SC’s growing electricity demand. Coal burning plants emit carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas and contributor to global warming, nitrogen oxide, a component in smog, sulfur dioxides, a contributor to acid rain, and mercury, a highly toxic metal when converted to methyl mercury. These proposed plants would annually produce over 8 million tons of CO2 and discharge 300 pounds of mercury into the Great Pee Dee River as a byproduct of burning coal. The S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control has already issued a high mercury level advisory for the consumption of many fatty fish caught in the Great Pee Dee, and adding another coal plant would only exacerbate the problem.

One thought on “Coal plants are a step in the wrong direction?

  1. Thea Sigal

    This plant is DEFINITELY a step in the wrong direction. Have we learned nothing about these chemicals? They are extremely dangerous and adding more mercury into the environment is a huge hazard to us. We already get some mercury from the fish we eat and now it will be in the air. Also, global warming is already a huge problem for us and to release even more carbon dioxide into the environment is ludicrous. The solution: Find another solution that isn’t going to endanger our health and the environment’s. Scientists all over the world are coming up with innovations in environmental technology. Finding an alternative to a coal plant really shouldn’t be that far behind, if not already discovered.

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