|
|
 COLUMBUS — Baard Energy’s own estimate for the construction costs of their proposed coal refinery in Wellsville reached $6,898,587,288.81 in December, 2008, according to documents obtained under a public records request. The figure appears on page 13 of a document submitted by the Columbiana County Port Authority to the Ohio Department of Development in pursuit of a $4.5 million loan for the Baard project. Steve Dopuch, Baard Energy Vice President for Business Development, now President, was the contact for Baard data in the submission. This amount is almost double Baard Energy’s August 2006 construction cost estimate of $3.5 billion. Baard has not released any revised cost estimates since December, 2008, so the current amount is a matter of speculation.
These estimates are for construction costs only, not for debt service, that is, interest payments on money borrowed to pay for construction. Anyone who has taken out a mortgage can testify to what interest payments can do to the total cost of a new house.
If Baard Energy had had any investors in this project, they would have pulled the plug by now.
– Paul Ryder, Organizing Director, Ohio Citizen Action
Sources for Baard estimates: All the cost estimates in the chart are taken from direct statements by John Baardson, CEO, or Steve Dopuch, President, Baard Energy, or newspaper accounts based on interviews with them.
August 21, 2006: $3.5 billion, November 17, 2006: $4 billion, April 30, 2007: $4 billion, September 25, 2007: $5 billion, December 21, 2007: $5.5 billion, November 17, 2008: $6.8 billion, December 19, 2008: $6,898,587,288.81.
 Sandusky Register photo by Jason Werling. The Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station and cooling tower in Carroll Township. OAK HARBOR — “With more questions arising out of the latest situation at Davis-Besse, federal regulators announced late yesterday they have dispatched a special inspection team to the Ottawa County nuclear plant.
Viktoria Mitlyng, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman, said three inspectors with highly specialized skills will join the plant’s two permanent resident inspectors to beef up the agency’s onsite review. An untold number of NRC employees at the agency’s headquarters in suburban Washington and at its regional office southwest of Chicago will provide additional assistance, she said.
Ms. Mitlyng said the NRC is taking an especially hard look because of Davis-Besse’s past, which includes the near-rupture of the plant’s old reactor head in 2002.
Ottawa County Administrator Jere Witt, a member of the FirstEnergy nuclear review board, said yesterday the latest setback ‘certainly was not expected,’”
Tom Henry, Toledo Blade
Read the whole story
 A flood of coal ash slurry from the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston Fossil Plant Dec. 29, 2008 in Harriman, Tenn. An earthen dam holding a containment pond broke Dec. 22, 2008, unleashing a billion gallon flood of toxic sludge into the Emory River. CLEVELAND — Ohio Citizen Action today urged Cass Sunstein, Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, to accept the invitations he is receiving to visit the homes of people in Ohio and across the country whose communities have been devastated by Toxic Coal Ash. The letters, including that of Elisa Young of Meigs County, recount individuals’ experiences of living in communities where coal ash has poisoned drinking water, endangered people’s health, and caused home values to plummet.
Coal ash, an unregulated hazardous byproduct of burning coal, has been dumped into communities across America, contaminating groundwater and drinking water with toxic metals including arsenic, mercury, lead and boron.
Elisa Young of Meigs County, OH; Diane Neugebauer of Greene Township, PA; Steve Scarborough of Harriman, TN and John Wathen of Uniontown, AL each wrote personal letters to Administrator Sunstein, inviting him to come to their communities and see toxic coal ash devastation for himself.
Last October, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed new rules to regulate coal ash disposal, but the new protections have been stalled for five months at the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, headed by Cass Sunstein. Since his office received the proposed regulations, Sunstein’s staff has met with representatives of the coal and fly ash industries more than 20 times, but only met with a handful of citizens personally affected by coal ash. Sunstein has not made any public trips to see the real-life effects of coal ash on communities across America.
— Rachael Belz, Program Organizer, Ohio Citizen Action
 COLUMBUS — “While mercury emissions from power plants across the United States have decreased in recent years, the amount released at American Electric Power’s Gavin plant in southeastern Ohio more than doubled from 2007 to 2008.
That puts Gavin and two other Ohio coal-fired power plants on a list of the top 50 mercury polluters in the United States.
A report released yesterday by the Environmental Integrity Project, an advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., ranked Gavin No. 12 on the list for emitting 937 pounds of mercury in 2008, the most recent year for data, up from 435 pounds in 2007,”
— Spencer Hunt, Columbus Dispatch
Read the whole story
 CHATTANOOGA, TN — “The civic travesty of so-called mountain-top removal mining, though widely used in West Virginia and in some other Appalachian states, has not yet laid waste to much of Tennessee. At the moment, just four of Tennessee’s peaks and the valleys below them are subject to utter despoliation: we say ‘just four’ with great trepidation of a potential wave of mountain-top slaughter. This rapacious devastation of Tennessee’s beautiful mountain tops will proceed apace as surely as dew forms on spring grass unless Tennessee’s lawmakers step up to the challenge of banning this environmentally monstrous excuse for mining.
So it is mystifying that Republican gubernatorial candidates Ron Ramsey, the state Senate majority leader, and 3rd Dist. Rep. Zach Wamp just blew off the question of whether they would support a ban in Tennessee on mountain-top removal mining practices.”
— editorial, Chattanooga Times Free Press
Read the whole story
 Ohio Congressman Charlie Wilson and Ohio Governor Ted Strickland
COLUMBUS — On March 5, Catherine Turcer, Director, Money in Politics Project, Ohio Citizen Action, sent a formal public records request to Ohio Governor Ted Strickland for documents about the circumstances of a sudden turnaround in Baard Energy’s fortunes. The company’s coal refinery project, which had been turned down twice previously for funding by state agencies and received low evaluations from state development professionals, suddenly in December, 2008, found itself the recipient of $500,000 of public funds, and then five months later, another $4.5 million.
Now, from a separate public records request, come documents that may explain the sudden turnaround. On November 14, 2008, a Baard official reported, “FYI Congressman [Charlie] Wilson is having a ‘quiet dinner’ with the Governor tomorrow evening.” The email came from Steve Dopuch, Vice President, Baard Energy, and was addressed to John Baardson, CEO, Baard Energy; Tracy Drake, CEO, Columbiana County Port Authority; and David DiStefano, a Locke Lord lobbyist and former chief of staff to Congressman Bob Ney. In a separate email earlier that day, Dopuch had said, “We are working closely with Tracy [Drake], [Congressman] Charlie Wilson, Senator [Jason] Wilson, et al, in order to get the Governor’s team’s commitment.”
The timing of the dinner fits the surrounding events. On November 12, Lt. Governor Lee Fisher, then serving as Ohio Department of Development Director, called Tracy Drake to tell him that the department had rejected the Baard coal refinery project request for $5 million. The Baard proposal had ranked 52nd out of 55 submissions. Drake immediately reported this by email to Chris Gagin, District Director for Congressman Wilson. That would give Wilson time to call Strickland and arrange dinner three days hence.
The next week, the wheels were in motion to reverse the Development Department’s decision. On Wednesday, November 19, just one week after being rejected, Dopuch met with Fisher and department staff to discuss details of the state subsidy. Did the dinner make the difference?
— Paul Ryder, Organizing Director, Ohio Citizen Action
Sen. Jason Wilson holds public session
STEUBENVILLE — “Baard, he said, is progressing and should begin some engineering site survey work this spring. He said financing still is a hold-up for the project, which seeks to build a refinery to turn local coal into jet fuel,” Paul Giannamore, Steubenville Herald-Star. Published March 15.
Port rents space for Walmart renovation
EAST LIVERPOOL — “[Port Authority Chief Executive Officer Tracy] Drake also reported that Baard Energy officials indicated they are getting closer to putting the finishing touches on the private financing package necessary to proceed with plans to build a $6 billion coal-to-liquid fuel plant outside of Wellsville. When the project was announced in mid-2006, construction was expected to begin by mid-2008 and the plant to be producing fuel by the middle of 2011. Drake said Baard officials are telling him to be prepared by June to exercise the various options to purchase land for the plant, with site work to begin in July,” Tom Giambroni, East Liverpool Review. Published March 16.
 John Kasich and Gov. Ted Strickland COLUMBUS — 5,628 Ohio Citizen Action members and friends have written to Governor Ted Strickland and gubernatorial candidate John Kasich, urging them to discontinue using our tax dollars on the proposed Baard Energy coal refinery in Wellsville, in Columbiana County, Ohio. The proposed refinery will burn 9.3 million tons of coal a year. Columbiana County already fails to meet Ohio EPA standards for soot. Though Baard Energy has not specified a source for their coal, the closest is West Virginia, where the worst of mountaintop removal coal mining is occurring. Why would we want our tax dollars to go to another dirty coal refinery which could increase the demand for mountaintop removal coal? Meanwhile, essential state services are being cut.
Next, Ohio Citizen Action members and friends will be sending letters to Ohio Senate President Bill Harris and Ohio House Speaker Armond Budish, both of whom have the final say in where our tax dollars are spent.
— Kate Russell, Organizer, Ohio Citizen Action
 WASHINGTON, DC — Rep. Bill Foster, a second term northern Illinois Democrat has signed on as the 166th co-sponsor, including chief sponsor Frank Pallone (D-NJ) of the Clean Water Protection Act (HR 1310). The bill would effectively ban the practice of mountaintop removal coal mining. Before running for Congress, Foster was a particle physicist at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois. While there, he helped discover the heaviest know form of matter, the “top quark.” Foster is also a former businessman, having started Electronic Theatre Controls, Inc., with his brother Fred in their basement. The company now manufactures most of the theater lighting equipment in the United States.
— Paul Ryder, Organizing Director, Ohio Citizen Action
CHARLESTON, WV — “Water quality downstream from surface coal-mining operations in West Virginia and Kentucky greatly exceeds recommended toxicity limits, according to previously unreleased sampling data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
EPA scientists found toxicity levels as high as 50 times the federal guidelines in water downstream from mining operations. In-stream water samples from 14 of 17 sites EPA tested exceeded the agency’s guidelines.
Government officials took the samples in 2007 and 2009, but have never released their own report to outline the findings.”
— Ken Ward, Jr., Charleston Gazette
Read the whole story
 PARKERSBURG, WV — “People near DuPont’s Washington Works plant will undergo another round of tests to measure whether a chemical used to produce Teflon is affecting their immune systems.
More than 60,000 people in the Parkersburg area have already been tested. The new round of blood tests and questionnaires will take a closer look at as many as 800 people from that first group, said Dr. Tony Fletcher, part of the court-appointed science panel studying the problem.”
— Associated Press
Read the whole story
|
|
