If you care about your
health—along with Georgia’s natural resources and environment—you might want to
sit down. But before you find a comfy perch, I suggest you grab a roll of your favorite
antacids—Tums, Rolaids or Maalox.
Maybe chew a
few.
A
bad situation is getting worse. Our state has become a dangerous dumping ground
for what other places don’t want. Toxic coal ash is pouring into Georgia.
Why?
In
2018 our General Assembly unfurled a welcome mat by leaving in place a
ridiculously cheap ($1 per ton) landfill surcharge for coal ash while raising
solid municipal waste to $2.50 per ton. Even before that unwise measure, Wayne
County quietly got 800,000 tons of Florida’s toxic ash from the Jacksonville
Electric Authority (JEA). Fortunately, none has been added since 2014.
 |
|
Several catastrophic toxic coal-ash spills have
occurred in America in recent years. Coal ash is laden with numerous dangerous heavy metals. This photo, by Rick Dove of Waterkeeper Alliance, shows a 2014 spill in North Carolina. |
But
with the new law, the dump trucks—piled with toxic coal ash—have picked up the
pace into the Peach State. The Carolinas’ Duke Energy has piled
Lord-knows-how-many millions of tons in Banks County, north of Athens. Landfills
in seven Georgia counties—Meriwether, Taylor, Chatham, Banks, Cherokee, Crisp
and Charlton—are permitted by the Georgia Environmental Protection Division
(EPD) to receive toxic coal ash.
Here’s
where you might need to chew more antacids.
According
to a recent news article, AES Puerto Rico—operator of a coal-fired power
plant—is loading its waste onto cargo ships and sending it to Jacksonville’s
private port, Keystone Terminal. Reportedly, the original
out-of-the-public’s-view plans were to dump the toxic waste in an Osceola
County, Florida, landfill. When people around Kissimmee discovered the stealth
shenanigans, they rallied in protest.
And you guessed it.
Georgia
is getting what Florida didn’t want—toxic coal ash. Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory,
objects to the waste on its island, too, so it’s coming to Waste Management’s
Chesser Island Landfill in Charlton County. The private landfill, near
Folkston, is on the lip of one of the globe’s ecological wonders, the
Okefenokee National Refuge.
How’s that for
caring about our natural resources and environment?
Coal
ash isn’t a new addition to Chesser Island. When Georgia Power closed its
McManus coal-fired plant in Brunswick, an estimated 550,000 tons of toxic ash
was shipped to Charlton County. I suspect there’s plenty of JEA waste there,
too.
Georgia’s
General Assembly is in session. There is some proposed legislation that needs
your support. Your state representative and senator should hear from you. For
years, too many of our politicans have slurped Georgia Power’s
Coal-Ash-Ain’t-So-Bad Kool-Aid. Rather than doing what’s in the best interest
of 10 million Georgians, lawmakers have traditionally kowtowed to lobbyists
representing producers of toxic coal ash.
Georgia
Power is a highly valued player in our state’s economic prosperity. We depend
on the giant utility in countless ways, but we cannot ignore that its underbelly
is coated with more than 50 million tons of poisonous coal ash.
This is the
year, 2020, for our elected leaders to do the right thing.
Don’t just sit
there and chew antacids.
Make your voices
be heard on House Bill 756 and Senate Bill 123.
When it comes
to toxic coal ash, Puerto Rico proves that Georgia has what my late mother
would call a “mell of a hess.”
dnesmith@cninewspapers.com
