Stop the White Stallion Coal Power Plant in Bay City, Texas
Over its lifetime, the White Stallion coal plant—proposed for Matogorda County, Texas—will lead to an estimated 600 deaths. The health impacts it will cause will cost society nearly $5.5 billion.
People and agencies objecting to the plant include judges, public interest lawyers, the U.S. EPA and a number of other agencies, not to mention hundreds of people of Matagorda County.
Yet the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) has issued an air permit for a plant, to be built in Bay City, a city of nearly 20,000 people not far from the Gulf Coast. The EPA nullified this permit in 2010, but the Kansas-based energy company is still trying to move forward with the project.
The No Coal Coalition of Matagorda County came together back in 2009 to oppose this power plant, which was being fast-tracked by TCEQ, and it is still working hard to protect the area (and the world) from this highly polluting plant. It recently created a petition here on Change.org to get more local citizens and more of the country as a whole behind its efforts.
The proposed plant doesn't meet a high standard even for coal power plants, not using the best-available control technologies for air emissions. Additionally, it would inefficiently use the area's limited fresh water, which is already a very scarce resource, the lack of which may soon push local farmers out of business.
"Loss of freshwater inflows into the Colorado River and Matagorda Bay system are currently a problem threatening the health of these waters, and the White Stallion coal plant might be the nail in the coffin for these waters. The toxins the plant will emit are of course another concern to the fishery and to the health of the people. The loss of the agriculture and fishing industries will devastate our economy in Matagorda County," the coalition writes in its petition.
Texas Public Citizen, the Environmental Defense Fund, and the Sierra Club helped to get the No Coal Coalition going back in 2009. The members of the board all live in Matagorda County. They work in the following fields: public education, financial, ranching, chemical, and medical.
Joining the coalition are 35 local area physicians who have spoken up in opposition to this coal plant by writing a joint letter in the local press. The Houston Audubon Society, Texas Parks and Services & US Fish and Wildlife Service, Nature Conservancy, EPA, Sierra Club, Lake Travis Chamber of Commerce, and several others have written letters in opposition to the White Stallion Power Plant as well, and the controversy has gotten national attention.
Visit the No Coal Coalition site for more information and visit its Facebook page for continuous updates on the case.
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Photo credit: Courtesy of No Coal Coalition
Zachary Shahan
has studied society and the environment for years, writes on these issues for a number of blogs, and is now the editor of planetsave.com, ecolocalizer.com, and cleantechnica.com.
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