Coalition holds Relay for Clean Air to protest Duke’s new coal-fired boiler
Duke’s proposed rate hike request at 18 percent, based on a 13.5 percent base rate hike plus a 4.5 percent coal surcharge
By David Tell
Staff Writer
The Canary Coalition held its annual Relay for Clean Air Saturday, Aug. 29, culminating in a news conference at Firestorm Cafe in downtown Asheville.
The driving message of this year’s relay was opposition to Duke Energy’s coal-fired boiler being built in Cliffside, west of Charlotte, and to the utility’s proposed rate hike. Avram Friedman, the Sylva-based Coalition’s director, urged the gathering at the cafe to attend state Public Utilities Commission hearings on the rate hike set in September. One is in Marion, the other in Franklin, on Tuesday, Sept. 22.
Friedman read a lengthy statement at the event, repeatedly emphasizing the idea that the public is “not powerless” in the face of corporate activities that pollute the air. In a mantra-like repetition, he insisted “we refuse to accept” existing and increasing pollution as “a permanent condition of our lives.”
Friedman noted some of the impacts of air pollution in Western North Carolina, including the fact that childhood asthma is the main reason for school absenteeism here and that the average visibility from area mountaintops in the summer is only 12 miles. He said the state Division of Air Quality’s 11 percent enforcement rate against industrial emitters of air pollution is the seventh worst in the nation.
Friedman described the fight for clean air as a civil rights struggle no less than were the historic movements around the issues of racial integration, discrimination and voting rights.
The relay follows a 100- mile route beginning near the Newfound Gap at the Tennessee border, and a clean air banner is passed by participants, some walking and some bicycling, along its segments.
Relay participants arrived at the Firestorm Cafe around 9:30, a half-hour later than the scheduled time for the news conference. The cafe was sparsely patronized till their arrival, and one couple waiting for it, a woman from Junaluska Assembly and a man from Asheville, got impatient and left beforehand. After the marchers showed up and Friedman spoke, the scene was standing room only. His statement was punctuated with several rounds of applause from the audience.
Friedman exhorted listeners to oppose Duke’s proposed rate hike, which would be its first since 1991, according to a 2007 release on its website. He pegs the rate increase at effectively 18 percent, based on a 13.5 percent base rate hike being asked plus a 4.5 percent coal surcharge. A Coalition release says the 13.5 percent rate hike is largely sought to cover the cost of the $2.4 billion coal plant, which it argues is not needed and thus is being built in contravention of state law and to the detriment of the environment.
Duke spokeswoman Paige Sheehan said it’s a misnomer for critics of the rate hike request to refer to it as the “Cliffside rate hike.” Only “a small percentage of the rate case addresses Cliffside, less than 20 percent,” she said. Most of it is going to pay down the costs of financing other investments and to reimburse Duke for other complete projects, Sheehan said.
However, insofar as critics are tying opposition to the rate hike to Cliffside, she addressed the claim that it is unneeded. Sheehan referred to the coal-fired plant as a bridge to Duke’s larger vision for its energy future, to enable it to shut down dirtier coal plants and help get the company and its customers to an energy future when new nuclear plants can be built after current ones may be decommissioned.
Sheehan admitted that there isn’t yet a technology for carbon sequestration (safe capture and storage). However, “Cliffside will be among the cleanest coal plants in the country,” she said, using all the latest technology for scrubbing sulfur and nitrogen compounds, mercury and soot (particulates). “You can’t capture carbon right now, but we’re investing millions of dollars to try to advance that technology,” She said.
As for the idea that if unneeded, it is also against state law to build it, “We have cleared every challenge made to the project,” which is nearly 50 percent complete, she said. “Sometimes people say you can meet load by doing energy efficiency and renewables. But we also have to modernize the system.” As for the point that regionally, power consumption is down, “After a recession, the demand for power jumps dramatically,” and Duke is required to plan for that and accommodate it, Sheehan said.
If the hike is not granted? “The main reason we’re asking for the increase is to pay the bills, to pay for the investments we’ve made, to reinvest the money in the system, to continue to build it out and make it clean,” Sheehan said. And, “We need to pay a reasonable return to our investors so financing costs remain affordable — and that savings goes into the ratepayers pockets.”
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Saturday 05 September 2009 - 15:43:45
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