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Contact: Joel Finkelstein,
(202) 822-5200
Steve Novak,
steve@wildlaw.org, 828-252-9223
March 3, 2008
BOONE, NC and WASHINGTON, DC – Advocates for the
mountains and coalfield residents today opened a new
front in the fight against destructive coal mining,
filing suit in Washington, D.C. District Court to
stop federal investment in new power plants that
would enshrine coal for another generation.
The suit, filed by the North Carolina-based
Appalachian
Voices and
Canary Coalition, states that the federal
government shouldn’t be in the business of
subsidizing coal plants without knowing the true
environmental costs – including impacts of
ultra-destructive mountaintop removal coal mining.
The Energy Policy Act of 2005 included $1.65 billion
in tax incentives for new coal plants, $1 billion of
which has been allocated to nine projects around the
country.
“The fact is that there’s no such thing as clean
coal as long as our mountains are getting clear-cut,
blown up and bulldozed down,” said Mary Anne Hitt,
Executive Director of Appalachian Voices. “Right
now, the electricity that powers your home may well
come from mountaintop removal coal. We need fewer
coal plants, not more.”
Mountaintop removal coal mining is an extremely
destructive form of strip mining found throughout
Appalachia, with some mines as big as the island of
Manhattan. Coalfield residents say that it tears
apart communities, poisons water supplies, pollutes
the air and destroys our nation’s natural heritage –
while only making the climate crisis worse.
“Members of the Canary Coalition and all people who
live, work or vacation in western North Carolina are
feeling the impact of existing coal-burning power
plants on our health and the environment,” said
Avram Friedman, Executive Director of the Canary
Coalition. “Asthma related to ozone pollution is the
largest cause of absenteeism in our public schools.
Emphysema plagues the elderly in this region. Heart
and lung disease related to fine particulate sulfur
dioxide has been documented by the American Lung
Association. We are threatened by tropical diseases
migrating north due to global warming caused by
carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions.
The status quo of air quality in western North
Carolina is unacceptable. Building and operating a
new coal-burning power plant such as Duke Energy’s
planned expansion at Cliffside is unacceptable.”
Of the nine experimental coal facilities that have
received tax incentives, none have conducted an
environmental impact assessment (EIA) looking at the
impact of coal on the environment – as required by
the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The
nine facilities include a Duke Energy projects in
Edwardsport, IN and in Rutherford and Cleveland
Counties, NC; a Mississippi Power Company project;
an E.ON U.S. & Louisville Gas and Electric project
in Bedford, KY; a Carson Hydrogen Power project in
Carson, CA; a TX Energy project in Longview, TX; a
Tampa Electric project in Polk County, FL (that is
currently delayed); and two anonymous coal
gasification projects.
The effort to end mountaintop removal has been
gaining steam over the past year. As of today, the
leading Congressional plan to end the practice has
129 co-sponsors – dozens more than last Congress,
and only halfway through this session.
Introduction
On June 29, 2007, Appalachian Voices, Wildlaw and
the
Environmental Integrity Project sent a letter to
the Secretary of Energy requesting, within 30 days,
an explanation of its intentions to correct or
ignore DOE’s ongoing violation of NEPA. The letter
contained a detailed analysis of DOE’s obligations
under NEPA summarized here:
The Energy Policy Act of 2005 requires DOE to
approve and allocate 1.65 billion dollars of tax
credits to promote so-called “clean coal”
facilities. DOE’s approval process began with
forty-nine applications from polluters seeking DOE
approval of these tax credits. In November of 2006,
DOE announced that it had approved and allocated the
first billion dollars of the tax credit to and
between nine applicants, including Duke Energy’s
proposed expansion of its Cliffside facility in
Rutherfordton, NC.
NEPA was enacted to reduce or eliminate
environmental damage by requiring all federal
agencies, including DOE, to take a “hard look” at
the environmental consequences of its actions. NEPA
serves two equally important functions. First, it
requires DOE to consider the environmental impacts
of a proposed action. Second, it ensures that DOE
will inform the public that it has considered
environmental impacts in its decisionmaking. In
fulfilling NEPA’s twin aims, DOE must prepare an
Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for actions
that are both major and which significantly affect
the quality of the environment.
Here, DOE’s certification constitutes a major action
because such actions include “new and continuing
activities, including projects and programs entirely
or partly financed, assisted, conducted, regulated,
or approved by federal agencies . . . [but] do not
include funding assistance solely in the form of
general revenue sharing funds, distributed under the
State and Local Fiscal Assistance Act . . .” In
fact, these subsidies—taken from the pockets of
America’s taxpayers—are not appreciably different
than other DOE programs that give taxpayer dollars
to polluters and for which DOE prepares an EIS.
Accordingly, DOE’s certification is a major federal
action. Additionally, because it can scarcely be
denied that the cradle-to-grave impacts of just
one—let alone nine—of these pollution sources will
significantly affect the environment, the crux of
our legal argument focuses on establishing that
DOE’s certification is a major federal action.
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