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Tallahassee voters were misused in the vote on coal burning plant in Taylor County
by Dr. J. Alva Scruggs
November 23, 2005

To set the coal based electrical power generating plant to be located in Taylor County perfectly clear language, in the list of power electrical producing plants used by communities the worst polluter is absolutely Nuclear power, proceeded by the fossil fuel burning coal plants (producing greenhouse gas accumulation, acidification, air pollution, water pollution, damage to land surface and ground-level ozone. sulphur and nitrogen by products). with the natural gas (Propane) burning plants, geothermal, wind, solar, etc. being the least polluters. (Google, McKinney, M.L. and Schoch, R.M., Environmental Science, Systems and Solutions. Third edition, University of Tennessee, Knoxville USA 2003) Of this there is no doubt.

But he location of these plants is as important to a community as the intensity of the pollution they may produce. Have you ever heard the phase, :"They live across the tracks?" This is the common phase used to designate where groups of people are housed in a community. This so called "track" is at times literally the Railroad Train track! However, it is not so much the railroad Track in some communities as it is the poor and disenfranchised ethnic groups that are economically forced to say there. These "across the track" communities are the city dumps, the sewage plants, some dirty polluting industrial plants, etc. This is the important secondary question of a coal plant in Taylor County, "Where will this coal burning plant be located?"

Take for example, the Blacks and poor who were forced to live in the bottom of the bowel in New Orleans. (Steve Breyman, Toxic Gumbo in New Orleans, breyms@rpi.edu, November, 2005) This is where all the pollution from the human waste of the higher Landers lived flowed, and the ground and sub tartan pollution of the Chemical and other industrial plant flowed. This was the seldom reported underemphasized foundation of the many health problems of the poor and blacks.

Therefore, we must not ask only if this coal burning plant will pollute (because this is a given it will pollute) but we must more importantly ask which group of citizens will suffer the most immediate and the highest intensity of health problems from this facility. The answer is that this plant will be built "across the tracks" and near the Black and poor citizens of Taylor County!!

The Tallahassee City Leaders pulled a sad political performance on its citizens by avoiding providing good information on the problems with a coal fueled power plant. They even refused to present a basic strait forward question to the voter in this resent ballot on the subject, "Should Tallahassee support a Fossil Fuel burying coal Power plant to be built in Taylor County." Further, Tallahaeessans should be uniquely incensed at the way our highly trusted Commissioner Gillum, worded his support for the plant question. He said he was voting "yes" to the question without calling attention to the fact that the question was inadequate and misleading!! For Shame!!!

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