Citizens defend SC future while public servants pretend

Submitted by: Kathryn Hilton

There is a coal war in South Carolina.  A fight where a main energy provider, Santee-Cooper, our state regulatory agency, the Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC), and many legislators are trying to take our rights away!  We, the citizens of South Carolina will NOT stand for this injustice.  In our efforts to bring a clean energy future to South Carolina we face many hurdles, fighting in South Carolina is a difficult battle.  Things that are our God given rights as human beings are taken from us.  February 12, 2009 was no exception.

On this day many citizens from across South Carolina assembled in front of DHEC headquarters to rally for clean energy and make our regulatory board take notice of those of us opposed.

After the rally there was an appeal hearing for the Air Quality Permit DHEC granted to Santee-Cooper.  Many organizations and individuals filed appeals.  Our request was heard and we were given a chance to present our case.

I was there on this day.  I listened to both sides.  I heard the negative impacts on the environment and our health this new coal-fired power plant would bring.  I heard DHEC defending their decision and Santee-Cooper downplaying the negative effects.  I had hope the department in charge of protecting our health and environment would admit their mistake in granting an Air Quality permit to Santee-Cooper, not defend their error.  I was wrong.  Their decision was made before any of us walked into the board room that morning.   Santee-Cooper still has their Air Quality permit, concerned groups will appeal this decision in court.

This is not right!  My health and my future are important to me!  This is my call to action!  We may have lost a battle, but we will not lose the war.

I ask you all to join me in protest of this coal-fired power plant in South Carolina and for coal power everywhere.

Take a stand!  Join in solidarity and be part of this change in power.  No longer will corporations be allowed to have unlimited say in what comes and goes in our lives.  This is our home and our life, we must fight to save it, and we must do this now!

Public Service Commission, my thumb!

This week, the South Carolina Public Service Commission ignored all reason and public sentiment in granting South Carolina Electric & Gas a blank check to start charging rate payers for the construction of two new nuclear reactors that are not near fully permitted.  Two reactors that may never be fully built, that may never come online, and still we will pay the 37% rate increase (which could inflate to as high as a 75% as costs inevitably increase) with no hope of  redress.  It’s a pathetically premature move on behalf of the PSC and one that reveals their unwavering loyalty to the utilities and big industry. After an extensive, and at times painfully lengthy hearing process, in which citizen after citizen testified, demanding that SCE&G be required to actually address the potential of energy efficiency, conservation and renewable energy in their application before the PSC, that the PSC in no way allow the utility the right to charge its ratepayers for such a boondoggle of a project, the commissioners put on their most patronizing smiles to thank the public for its participation and input.  They then, promptly and unanimously voted against the public and in favor of SCE&G.

Prepared citizens dressed in costume as “nuclear bailout victims” and “fleeced ratepayers” in hopes that they’d look foolish when the PSC made the right decision.  Unfortunately, our theater wasn’t the only one at play in the PSC meeting room and, ultimately, we weren’t the ones looking foolish.  Puppets of industry, seven supposed public servants sold SCE&G ratepayers down the river.  To check out footage of the hearing/protest, visit: WISTV Columbia and to read more about the decision, visit: The State.  And to fight back, visit the SCE&G Ratepayers Strike group.

Debunking GNEP, Defending South Carolina, Georgia and the planet!

The Department of Energy has been hosting Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement scoping meetings all across the country to solicit public input on the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership program being pursued by the federal government and last night they were in Graniteville, SC.

GNEP is a program designed to encourage the expansion of nuclear energy, decrease the likelihood of nuclear proliferation and address the massive problem of nuclear waste by “closing” the nuclear fuel cycle and reprocessing nuclear waste.  Unfortunately, it only really succeeds in expanding nuclear energy.  Meanwhile, nuclear reprocessing:

• creates more dangerous nuclear waste streams (meaning it doesn’t “close” the nuclear fuel cycle at ALL)
• creates orphaned, weapons-grade plutonium in quantities vulnerable to theft and proliferation (we can thank nuclear reprocessing for Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program)
• will cost taxpayers a massive 700 billion dollars
• emits 150,000 times more radiation than traditional nuclear reactors
• has been linked to heightened levels of childhood leukemia around existing facilities
• would essentially condemn any site chosen for a reprocessing facility to being a national nuclear wasteland, since spent fuel can be shipped to location now, before the technology is created that can reprocess that waste

For all these reasons, concerned citizens and young people from South Carolina and Georgia stood up and spoke out against the broader program and the siting of a nuclear reprocessing facility at the Savannah River Site on the border between the two states.  Opponents stuck to the facts and argued that GNEP was a bad decision, challenging the DOE to pursue an energy legacy that ends the nuclear fuel cycle instead of “closing” it.  We cannot afford to let our country tout this dirty, false solution to climate change any more.  All across the country citizens have had enough and let the DOE know about it!

For more information, check out:  www.bubbasnofool.org

and to submit comment to the DOE, visit: GNEP PEIS and click on the bubble next to “add comments”

Rate payer wars rock South Carolina Public Service Commission

This Monday marked the beginning of what is planned to be a week long hearing before the South Carolina Public Service Commission in which South Carolina Electric & Gas is requesting a 37% rate increase (to be implemented over ten years), to pay for the construction of two new nuclear reactors in Jenkinsville, SC.  The 37% figure is somewhat dubious, as it is based on shockingly low cost estimates for the reactor project (half of what other utilities and the Department of Energy are forecasting as the cost for the very same reactor design).

Of course, SCE&G’s application for the permits to build the two new reactors are woefully inadequate in researching the potential for energy efficiency programs or renewable energy.  Instead of investing our money in a clean, safe, healthy energy future, SCE&G is trying to make ratepayers subsidize their dirty energy facilities.

During the two public comment periods, in which anyone could sign up to testify before the Public Service Commission, the opposition far outnumbered the support for this rate increase.  Young people and concerned citizens came out in droves to speak out in defense of rate payers, our planet and our people.  The final public comment period on Wednesday had to be extended by more than two hours to accomodate all that wanted to speak.  In addition to all the public comment made, dozens of written comments were submitted by concerned citizens all across the state.

Now we will have to wait for the PSC to deliberate before we know if SCE&G will be granted their requested rate increase.  Once this decision is made, it is final and will allow SCE&G a blank check and the option of increasing the rates even further to pay for their construction.  Even if the two new reactors are never built or never come online, the ratepayers have no way of recovering their money, thanks to legislation passed in South Carolina last year.

Regardless of the decision, though, South Carolina will not go down without a fight; we will continue to organize in opposition of this nuclear project even if we can’t protect our pocketbooks from a “Public Service” Commission with a questionable track record.

South Carolina Youth Deflate Dreams of New Coal

The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control doesn’t know how to handle all the young people coming out and speaking out against Santee Cooper’s proposed “Pee Dee Energy Campus,” a pretty euphamism to mask Santee Cooper’s dirty ambitions for a 600 MW pulverized coal plant on the banks of the Great Pee Dee River. Nor did the crowd of Santee Cooper subsidized supporters know how to handle us. Speaker after speaker tried to undermine the intentions of the twenty young people present by meanly accusing us of being there for school credit or by leveraging age as an indicator of intelligence.

However, the youth message was wildly different. Ten young people got up to speak last night and made public comments urging DHEC to deny Santee Cooper a 401 Water Quality permit that they need to build an intake and discharge structure on the Great Pee Dee River. Our message was one of unity, of shared hopes and common needs. In a community that desperately needs jobs, in a state with growing energy demands, young people challenged Santee Cooper, looking CEO Lonnie Carter right in the eye, to be a national leader and a real force of innovation for the state. Communities should not have to be sacrificed at the alter of energy demands, especially when there are healthy, clean alternatives.

Santee Cooper’s coal plant would: emit 93 lbs of mercury into an environment already overburdened by high mercury levels, destroy 92 acres of wetlands, create toxic ash dumps on the banks of a large fresh water source, employ 100 people and perpetuate the devastation of Appalachian communities. A 3% increase in statewide energy efficiency efforts would eliminate the “need” for the coal plant and serious investment in clean energy would create tens of thousands of jobs across the state. Santee Cooper has a choice to make and South Carolina’s youth will not settle!!

Challenging Radioactive “Greens”

Today, the South Carolina nuclear complex was treated to an obscenely dignified luncheon with former EPA head and recent co-founder of the Clean and Safe Energy coalition, Christine Todd Whitman.  Whitman has been traveling the southeast preaching her reformed gospel of nuclear power and receiving audiences as captive and convinced as those of the old open tent revivals.  Instead of haunting her audiences with fire and brimstone, though, Whitman threatens rolling brownouts or, even worse, blackouts. Obviously if we want to address climate change and continue to provide energy for a world addicted to their ipods and cell phones (a consumption pattern that Whitman wouldn’t dare to challenge), we need nuclear power.

Sitting at the top of the world, eating the catered lunch and bantering with the woman next to me about how beautiful the view was, I became anxious.  Whitman’s messaging was all right: we need to address climate change, we need to protect our environment and our people, we need to challenge American ingenuity and act now.  But her solution is false, empty and devastating.  The climate around nuclear power is shifting to one of greater acceptance but the realities remain same.  Nuclear reactors are hugely expensive projects which ratepayers and taxpayers will fund, the reactors require massive amounts of water to cool, thus straining our draught impacted waterways, and nuclear power is devastating to the communities that mine the uranium, that produce the power and that live with the waste.  It’s a lifecycle of destruction and the only winners are those pocketing the profits.

So as Ms. Whitman dodged answering my question, I was reminded that it must be the respoinsibility of the youth climate movement to answer the pro-nuke propoganda being fed our country and support the real, healthy, just solutions for energy that demand the talent and ingenuity of America without compromising our future.  As others hesitate, we must lead!