Note to KCP&L: Carbon is Dead!

More silliness from Kansas City! We have a huge river that has a hell of a current, but KCP&L wants to build a Coal Fired electric plant in the river-town of Weston. Never mind that we get a lot of sunshine to power solar cells. Never mind that the wind blows here a lot, especially on the rivers, and wind farms would be a prudent investment. Never mind that the river has been channeled to deepen and narrow it, and the current is now too swift for safe navigation or recreation. Never mind that coal-fired plants contribute massively to environmental degradation, both in the mining and the burning of coal. Never mind that the citizens of the town where they want to build it don't want it.

I am not a big fan of new hydro-electric power generating stations. Usually, I would go nuclear at the mention of the thought. But in the case of the Missouri river, I am willing to make an exception. The Army Corp has totally fucked up our river, and a brief history lesson is in order. The Missouri was wide and shallow. Barges were unable to move cargo year round because in dry months (usually when crops needed to be moved downstream to markets) the river was unnavigable because it would go shallow and expose the sand bars, and barges would get hung up. So the Army Corps of Engineers decided to channel the river, making it narrower and deeper. In so doing, they made the current to swift, and barges are rarely, if ever, seen on the river these days. (That is telling to me in this age of $2.50-a-gallon gasoline.)

Given that the river is messed up already, and is an annual contender for "Most Endangered River" why not put in a reservoir, develop a lakefront and power our city with the river we have tried for decades to kill? Why bring in trainloads of coal that has to be mined and transported by train, instead of using what we have here? (Wind, sun and water.)

Or Nuclear. I've been pissing off the deep-green environmental types for over twenty years by saying that nuclear wasn't inherently evil, that we needed to improve the safety, but it was pretty clean and efficient otherwise, and we should make it safe earlier instead of later 'cause like it or not, it was coming. Now the Sierra Club is saying the same thing. I wonder if anyone who dissed me back then will look me up to send an email with a mea culpa? Probably not.

But not only does KCP&L (Kansas City Power & Light) want to foul our air and water with the by-products of a coal-fired plant, they want to raise our rates by 20% to do it. That's like paying 14 1/2 electric bills a year, at our current rate, instead of 12.

The Kansas City metro area is growing. I do not dispute that we may need additional sources of electricity to accommodate our increasing population and growth. I just think a coal-fired plant is outdated and, quite frankly, foolish. Coal is carbon, and carbon is dead. Literally and figuratively. It is time to move on, and evolve our thinking on energy matters to the current century - and beyond! (apologies to Buzz Lightyear.)

fossil fuels are finite. Fossil fuels degrade the environment in multiple ways, not the least of which is their impact on the global climate. We are warming the globe, and a great part of that is due to CO and CO2 in the environment. Those nasty little molecules are the product of burning fossil fuels. They are unavoidable when fossil fuels are burned, and the emission of even more of them into the atmosphere is unconscionable. And even the best scrubbers developed to date are not capable of removing all of the SO2 (sulfur Di-Oxide) from the smokestacks, and SO2 is the main component of "acid rain*." Coal fired plants contribute to the increase of Mercury (chemical symbol Hg) into the environment. Hg is a heavy metal, and a neurotoxin. It stores in fat, and in the environment. Pregnant women are cautioned from eating fish and other foods because the Hg content can irreversibly harm the fetus they carry. Why in the world would we opt for a power source that poisons our progeny? Given these facts, I think that another coal-fired plant anywhere in the world is just a lousy idea. I am backing the Sierra Club and Concerned Citizens of Platte County on this one. Stop the construction of this financial boondoggle and environmental nightmare.


(*In case anyone doesn't know, acid rain is the term applied to rain that falls and has a pH that falls below 6.5 on the 14-point pH scale. A pH of one is the most acidic and a pH of 14 is the most alkaline. Seven is preferable.)