Cleveland City Council Considers Coal

Thursday, February 21, 2008
Topics: Environment, Politics, Other
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The City of Oberlin this week voted against a proposal to buy a stake in a planned coal-fired power plant in Southern Ohio. Cleveland faces the same decision. Friday Cleveland City Council will hold a final hearing on the proposal before a vote expected next week. And, as ideastream's Dan Moulthrop reports, this vote is not typical City Council fare...

To put it bluntly, Cleveland City Councilman Brian Cummins says this upcoming vote is a stretch. 

Councilman Cummins: You know we all know it’s a huge issue. It’s a rarity that we go from potholes and streetlights to basically global energy policy, because that’s really what this is.

The deal under consideration with American Municipal Power, or AMP-Ohio--the city and Cleveland Public Power would commit to a ten percent stake, lasting fifty years, in a yet to be built coal-fired power plant in Meigs County in Southern Ohio. The prospect of a dependable source of energy to meet growing demand and insulate energy users from a fluctuating market is enticing. The problem? Well, that might have been articulated best by a caller to WCPN’s Sound of Ideas...earlier this week.

Caller: Here we are declaring ourselves a green city on a blue lake, making a lot of commendable reforms, and then, when push comes to shove in terms of energy, we go running back to the cutting edge of the 19th century in terms of energy technology, a technology that has been called by many scientists a planet killer.

In other words, the problem is coal.  Burning it creates serious environmental pollutants. There is a paradox here, though.  If the new coal plant is built, it would allow energy providers to take off-line older coal plants that pollute even more.  City Councilman Matt Zone who chairs the Public Utilities Committee explains.

Councilman Zone: From all the the data I have received and all the testimony that has been given and all the feasibility studies that I have read that there’s actually going to be a net reduction in carbon emissions, in NOX and SOX

NOX and SOX, that’s shorthand for a variety of greenhouse gases containing nitrogen and sulfur.

There’s another potentially big financial problem with a new plant, and the councilman mentioned it, briefly: Carbon emissions.  Right now, Carbon emissions standards are a moving target. Everyone knows new regulations are probably coming, but nobody knows how much it will cost to meet them.

Some Ohioans feel they have a greater stake than others in whether a new power plant is built: those living next door to the site of the proposed plant. Meigs County resident Elisa Young is an activist with Citizen Action Now, which has been fighting the plant.

Elisa Young: I’m a seventh generation appalachian from Meigs County and there are four coal fired power plants already in less than a ten mile radius from our farm and AMP-Ohio is only one of five power plants that is being proposed in our community.

And that means a higher concentration of coal-generated pollution for Meigs County than elsewhere. 

As is often the case, those environmental concerns are at odds with the potential for jobs that a new plant would bring.  That too is an important concern in Meigs County which has flirted with double-digit unemployment rates for decades and has a median household income of only slightly more than 27-thousand dollars.

At this point, those jobs are likely coming, regardless of how Cleveland city council votes. AMP-Ohio has lined up enough agreements with other Ohio cities to qualify for financing, that means the plant is probably going to be built. Reached by phone, Councilman Zone said that means Cleveland can become the environmental conscience of the project.

Councilman Zone: If Cleveland wasn’t a part of it, I would be concerned there would not be a voice that would give care and consideration to the environment, and Cleveland has the opportunity to be that voice.

Zone said council is open to approving the contract, but has concerns about the fifty year term and AMP-Ohio’s commitment to those environmental issues. He says he expects those concerns will be addressed in the hearing. The vote is expected next week.

Additional Information

Hear the recent Sound of Ideas conversation about the AMP-Ohio project.