(Warning: this is a rant.)
AAAAAHHH! Quit polluting my beautiful state for FREE! Ack!
Power plants make HUNDREDS of EPA pollution violations and pay NO FINES? What?? I'm lucky if I can talk my way out of one speeding ticket, but 392 of them, you must be joking. See the NYT map and data here.
I try to focus on positive solutions for climate change on this blog, but today's New York Times article on water pollution from coal-fired power plants fired up the economist in me. Effluent (regulated water discharge) violations from coal-fired power plants numbered between 59 and 392 violations for the ten top violators between 2004 and 2007. Gross, but okay, it happens, people & companies mess up sometimes. (There's the Three Mile Island near-miss, the TVA fly ash boo boo, maybe the whole prime-mortgage debacle...) But none of these coal plants that are top repeat violators had to pay anything for messing up. No fines?? None? Not even a little "oops, sorry my drunk college son keeps puking on your front steps, we're sending him over to clean it up and mow your yard." No three strikes you're out? Not even a symbolic 25 cents in the swear-jar?
It is not reasonable for plants that break federal regulations to pay the same amount as the plants that play by the rules. How, HOW, can a company be considered an advantage for the economy if 1) it dumps more pollution into my community than it pays for, 2) doesn't clean it up, 3) and doesn't pay for someone else to clean it up? If one of those three things is happening, the company is either not making enough profit, or is poorly managed. If you're not making enough profit, or you're too poorly managed to play by the rules (ie. regulations), GET OUT OF THE GAME! Go invest your capital in something that is legal. There are rules to capitalism and democracy (this is not anarchy kids), and if you're not willing to play by those rules, then you're not a capitalist, you're just stealing.
The New York Times downloaded this data in May 2009 — E.P.A. records may reflect updates since that date. The E.P.A. acknowledges known problems with its database. Only facilities with active permits are shown; those that have closed or had permits terminated prior to May 5, 2009 are not included. Additional explanations and supplementary data.
2 comments:
first of all, I know you don't get speeding tickets. i've seen you in action. but i don't think that was the point of this rant.
I can't believe this is happening, well actually i can. you can't expect coal plants to have a conscious when there's money to be made. ugh, patchwork systems of environmental law suck.
as for advantage to the economy, there's always that lobbyist sob story of how if the plant closed down then "insert random coal region town here" would just wither up and die. it's much better to mortgage our future health for a few more years of coal power than it would be to have the plants clean themselves up and see their profits take a hit. yep, that must be it.
haha, oh the good old days of that environmental law class... There's a new article out from researchers at HSPH that calculated the health care costs associated with exposure to air pollution that comes specifically from coal-fired power plants. Turns out that the health damages alone cost about $0.14/kWh produced, & the average U.S. price of electricity from coal is $0.12/kWh. I'll try to find the article, it's around here somewhere.
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