Day: March 26, 2007

Florida Power Company to Build Huge Coal Plant in the Everglades

Trish

It’s not just because I finally watched “An Inconvenient Truth” this weekend that I find the news that Florida Power & Light is planning to build one of the country’s largest coal-fired generating plants in the Everglades so infuriating.

The plant would emit 16 million tons of climate- changing carbon dioxide, making it the largest single source of global warming pollution in the state.

It’s also the unmitigated gall of a company that sucks every last dime of profit from its customers while feeding at the public trough. Floridians will be a long time forgetting how FPL used hurricane damage as an excuse to raise rates and then asked the state legislature for money to fix its equipment and lines. And got both.

But this latest news takes the cake.

Florida Power & Light’s rush to build one of the largest coal plants in the nation sets back the state’s efforts toward a clean energy future and dramatically increases global warming pollution…

The proposed coal plant would be a 5,000-acre industrial facility constructed in the heart of the Everglades, in the city of Moore Haven in Glades County, and would emit harmful pollutants 24 hours a day for more than 50 years.

The pollutants include: sulfur dioxide, that would acidify lakes, rivers, and the Everglades; nitrogen oxide, which is a precursor to smog and exacerbates respiratory diseases like asthma; soot that has been scientifically linked to lung cancer and cardiac arrest; and mercury, which is a potent neurotoxin that has already contaminated every major water body in Florida, leading to fish consumption advisories by the Department of Health. Lastly, the plant would emit 16 million tons of climate-changing carbon dioxide, making it the largest single source of global warming pollution in the state.

FPL does not talk about the emissions from the plant and its effect on our health and environment but rather on the low cost of coal as compared to other fuels.

It also talks, on its web site, about what a great friend to the environment it is.

We strive for more efficient operations and improved performance with less impact on the environment.

…Our commitment to reduce emissions has yielded important dividends for air quality.

…We look for ways to improve our operations to minimize impacts on wildlife near our facilities.

If, like me, you can’t let this plan stand, contact FPL and tell them what a bunch of money-grubbing hypocrites they are. As you might expect, they make it hard to give them feedback by requiring names and addresses in an online form but make something up. And give them an earful.

Novakula: GOP Rats on Capitol Hill Deserting USS Bush

Jon Ponder

Robert Novak says Pres. Bush has lost GOP support on Capitol Hill:

The I-word (for incompetence) is used by Republicans in describing the Bush administration generally.

With nearly two years remaining in his presidency, George W. Bush is alone. In half a century, I have not seen a president so isolated from his own party in Congress — not Jimmy Carter, not even Richard Nixon as he faced impeachment…

The I-word (for incompetence) is used by Republicans in describing the Bush administration generally. Several of them I talked to described a trifecta of incompetence: the Walter Reed hospital scandal, the FBI’s misuse of the Patriot Act and the U.S. attorneys firing fiasco. “We always have claimed that we were the party of better management,” one House leader told me. “How can we claim that anymore?”

…A few Republicans blame incessant attack from the new Democratic majority in Congress for that image. Many more say today’s problems by the administration derive from yesterday’s mistakes, whose impact persists. The answer that is not entertained by the president’s most severe GOP critics, even when not speaking for quotation, is that this is just the governing style of George W. Bush and never will change while he is in the Oval Office.