Washington Plant

{{#badges: CoalSwarm}} On January 23, 2008, POWER4Georgians - a consortium of ten Georgia electric membership cooperatives (EMC) (Central Georgia EMC, Cobb EMC, Diverse Power, Excelsior EMC, GreyStone Power, Jackson EMC, Pataula EMC, Snapping Shoals EMC, Upson EMC, and Washington EMC) - announced plans to build a $2 billion, 850-MW supercritical coal plant in Washington County, Georgia. Applications for air permits were filed with the Georgia Environmental Protection Division (EPD) in January.

In February and March 2008, a coalition of state environmental organizations and student environmental groups - led by CLEANPower4Georgians, itself a coalition of several groups - began organizing EMC ratepayers to oppose the new plant proposal.

According to the Sierra Club, as of July 2008, the Georgia EPD has yet to issue a draft permit.

In early March 2009, the Georgia EPD held a Question & Answer session for the proposed plant. The EPD indicated that it would not issue a draft air permit until after the GA Court of Appeals rules on Longleaf by the end of July 2009.

In May 2009, Jackson EMC and Diverse Power announced they had left Power4Georgians because of the uncertainty over carbon emissions regulations. GreyStone Power and Excelsior EMC also withdrew in May.

Just one day before the withdrawals began, the Institute for Southern Studies released a report about possible corruption related to the project. In April 2009, law enforcement officers searched the homes of top officials with Cobb Electric Membership Corp. A grand-jury investigation is underway into charges of theft from Cobb EMC via a spin-off corporation called Cobb Energy. Dwight Brown, the CEO of both Cobb EMC and Cobb Energy and also the founder and manager of POWER4Georgians, is among those under investigation. The ISS report also cited the questionable hiring of a fully-owned subsidiary of Cobb Energy to construct the $2.2 billion plant. Subsidiary Allied Energy Services received the contract with no competitive bidding process, in spite of the fact that it has no experience building coal plants.

On August 25, 2009, POWER4Georgians announced that the Georgia Environmental Protection Division had issued several draft permits for the Washington plant, including the air permit, surface water withdrawal permit, groundwater withdrawal permit, and water discharge permit.

Georgia legislature proposes coal moratorium bill

House Bill 276, proposed by Margaret Oliver (D-Decatur), would put a 5-year moratorium on building new coal plants and eliminate the burning of Appalachian coal mined by mountaintop removal by mid-2016. The Appalachian Mountain Preservation Act would gradually prohibit Georgia coal consumers from using Central Appalachian mountaintop removal beginning in 2011. The bill is backed by environmental groups including Appalachian Voices but received strong opposition from POWER4Georgians, the group behind the Washington plant.

Project Details

Sponsor: POWER4Georgians
Location: Sandersville, Washington County, Georgia
Capacity: 850 MW
Type: Supercritical
Projected in service: 2013
Status: Development

Citizen Groups

• CLEANPower4Georgians
• Southern Energy Network
• Georgia Environmental Action Network
• Environment Georgia
• Georgia Sierra Club
• GreenLaw

Resources

Related SourceWatch Articles

• Carbon Capture and Storage
• Existing U.S. Coal Plants
• US proposed coal plants (both active and cancelled)
• Coal plants cancelled in 2007
• Coal plants cancelled in 2008
• Coal plant litigation
• Georgia and coal
• State-by-state guide to information on coal in the United States (or click on the map)<us_map redirect="{state} and coal"></us_map>

External links

• "Stopping the Coal Rush", Sierra Club, accessed January 2008. (This is a Sierra Club list of new coal plant proposals.)
• [http//www.green-law.org GreenLaw]