Tallahassee residents say no to coal

More than 230 people packed City Hall, many wearing blue shirts with yellow badges that read "Clean Energy," to voice their opposition to the city's spending $300 million to help build a coal plant in North Florida. A group of utility companies approached the city about a month ago to share in the project.

For more than three hours, doctors, environmentalists and parents of children with respiratory problems from Leon, Jefferson and Taylor counties urged commissioners to reject the offer - or at least take more time to discuss it.

The City Commission is expected to make a decision July 13 on whether to spend $6 million to hold their spot in the project.

"We are pollution fatigued," said Janice Blair, a Taylor County resident. Taylor is the top choice to locate the plant. "We can't help them get their power. It's too much to ask for us to take the pollution for people in Tallahassee to have cheap electricity."

Despite the resounding response by area residents, the final decision on the coal plant doesn't rest with Tallahassee officials.

Kevin Wailes, the city's general manager of electric utility, stressed that the plant would likely be built without the city's participation. He warned that a delayed decision might cause the city to miss out on an opportunity to diversify its fuel mix and potentially lower the cost of power to local residents.

Utility officials argue the city's dependence on natural gas to generate power could have dire consequences on rates in the future. More than 90 percent of the city's fuel for electricity is natural gas.

The $1.4 billion plant would also provide the city with additional power to address the city's growing electricity needs.

But speakers hoped commissioners would send a message that the plant was not wanted.

Some offered alternative sources of power such as solar and hydroelectricity. Others wanted commissioners to focus on conservation measures to shrink the city's projected power needs.

Many asked for the city to put it to a public vote, much like it opted to in 1992, when voters defeated a coal-plant proposal, prohibiting the city from becoming an owner of a coal plant in Leon or an adjacent county without voter approval.

"I think all these blue shirts show that people are still seriously opposed to coal," said Holly Binns, clean air and energy advocate for the Florida Public Interest Research Group. The blue shirts signified blue skies and clean air, she said. "I don't buy that it's coming anyway. It will be a hard sale."

Much of the testimony - some very emotional - centered on the potential health hazards associated with a coal plant.

When coal is pulverized and burned to create electricity, it leaves behind mounds of toxic ash and releases sulfur, nitrogen and carbon dioxide into the air. Sometimes the toxic mixture in the ash can seep into the ground and eventually into the groundwater, which can pollute streams.

Mercury emissions have also been a cause for concern.

Medical studies have concluded people who live near coal plants are at greater risk for lung, brain and heart damage and that newborns and young children are at greater risk for chronic mental and developmental learning illnesses from mercury exposure.

Dr. Ronald Saff, a local asthma and allergy specialist and council member of the American Lung Association, said the city would be making a "deadly mistake" if it supported a coal plant.

"We know there's no such thing as safe cigarettes, and there's no such thing as a safe coal power plant," he said.

One of Saff's colleagues broke it down in simple, yet profound, terms.

Dr. David Huang, a Tallahassee pulmonary physician, asked one of his patients to address the commission. As the patient spoke, relaying how his condition would be worsened by toxic emissions from a nearby coal plant, he gasped for air.

Huang then took the microphone.

"When you can't breathe," he said, "nothing else matters."