The Santee Cooper Board of Directors, citing economic uncertainty, voted unanimously on Monday to suspend pursuing permits for a new coal-fired power plant proposed to be built in Florence County along the Great Pee Dee River. (Santee Cooper homepage.) This action makes it unlikely the plant will ever be constructed.

The proposal had been under fire from numerous environmental groups (see ConservationVoters of SC) opposed to coal-fired plants, which create massive amounts of greenhouse gases (primarily carbon dioxide) and mercury. Perhaps it is just coincidental that the announcement comes on the heels of the release of a multi-year study of mercury contamination (see my last post) which found the highest concentrations of mercury in southern blackwater rivers. The proposed location of the coal-fired plant in the Pee Dee area would likely impact the vast blackwater waterways of the Great Pee Dee, Little Pee Dee, Lynches, Lumbar, and Waccamaw rivers – all of which are already subject to a DHEC fish consumption advisory due to mercury contamination. (DHEC’s fish advisory map.)

In addition, the continued use of coal exacerbates controversial practices such as mountain-top removal mining in the Appalachians (http://www.nrdc.org/energy/coal/mtr/default.asp), as well as producing coal ash waste streams (which create secondary dangers – it was a coal ash slurry pond that collapsed in Kingston, Tennessee, sending millions of tons of toxin-containing slurry into waterways, destroying dozens of homes, and creating a clean-up currently estimated at $1.2B. (See one report here.).)

Energy production has long been a source of friction between industry (power producers and power users) and environmentalists. The fact that Santee Cooper acknowledged an environmental issue only in terms of costs & federal regulation is a reflection of the different points of view on this issue. Future progress, in terms of balancing efficiency and environmental protection, will require that both sides acknowledge the costs – monetary and environmental – that necessarily accompany energy production.