Do not expect a stampede anytime soon, but Republican attitudes appear to be shifting on the topic of coal ash, the toxic residue from coal-fired generators parked at Georgia Power sites and landfills across the state.
Right now, Senate Bill 123, authored by state Sen. William Ligon, R-Brunswick, is the only measure moving in the state Capitol. It would raise the $1 per ton surcharge on coal ash, which environmentalists argue has served as an invitation for private landfill operations to import the waste from as far away as Puerto Rico.
Other measures, including Democratic-backed bills to require coal ash ponds to be lined so as to prevent seepage of the substance into local aquifers, are currently stalled. But there are signs that Gov. Brian Kemp has begun to take an interest in the issue.
Last month, dozens of residents from the rural community of Juliette in Monroe County descended on the state Capitol bearing bottles of what they said was tainted well water. We saw no legislators willing to take a swig.
The residents blame a capped but unlined coal ash pond at Georgia Power’s Plant Scherer, one of five the utility proposes to leave in that condition.
Before they made the trip to Atlanta, the Juliette residents tapped a neighbor for some advice. Clay Tippins bought a farm in the area in 2010. Possibly, you remember him from the 2018 Republican primary for governor.
A former Navy SEAL and technology executive, Tippins was ousted in the first round of voting. But he helped turn the GOP runoff in then-Secretary of State Kemp’s favor by engaging Casey Cagle, the other remaining rival, in a secretly recorded conversation – in which the lieutenant governor spoke of ulterior motives for backing rather questionable legislation.
Suffice it to say that Tippins still has entrée into the Kemp circle.
Tippins said he did his homework first. He looked at tougher restrictions that have been imposed on coal ash ponds in other, Republican-controlled states – such as Indiana, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.
“Now that I’ve looked into it, the data has made me more concerned – not less so,” he said in a phone interview on Tuesday morning.
Coal ash can contain arsenic, lead, mercury and other heavy metals that can be toxic to humans. Trace amounts of hexavalent chromium, a known carcinogen, have been found in Juliette wells.
“There are about 1,009 families within two miles of that plant. And they’re all on well water coming out of the aquifer,” Tippins said. He pointed to a single road on which his neighbors had reported 15 to 17 cancer diagnoses. By name. “Obviously, cancer’s a complex thing,” Tippins said. “But that is an odd amount of cancer. That’s not normal. That doesn’t happen. Something’s going on there.”
Tippins said he has not spoken personally with Kemp, who has been busy of late. But he has connected with the governor’s staff. “I’m pleased by the level of attention they’re giving this,” Tippins said. Yet he is worried about what Republican lawmakers might be thinking of his Juliette neighbors.
Credit: Nedra Rhone
Credit: Nedra Rhone
“A lot of people in the Legislature that get a lot of political donations from Georgia Power say, ‘Oh, this is just Democrats trying to make noise,’” Tippins said. “I know all these people. The last Democrat any of them probably voted for was Zell Miller.
“These are not pro-environmental, rabid people. These are conservatives who are dying in unnatural numbers. All they want is someone to listen to them and do something to help them live,” Tippins said. “They’d talk to Lucifer or the Taliban if that was the only person that would come down there and look at what was going on.”
At Clay’s insistence, I put a call into Kemp’s people – and was told that the same team working on the ethylene oxide emissions at sterilization plants in Smyrna and Newnan had now added Juliette to their list of concerns.
Reliable well testing for dangerous contaminants is a first priority. The state Environmental Protection Division can test water for public systems, but not private ones. The University of Georgia might be a good alternative, said Candice Broce, director of communications and deputy executive counsel for the governor.
Broce said a very specific message was delivered by Juliette residents and those speaking up for them.
“They’re very concerned that this is going to devolve into a political back-and-fourth. They don’t want that,” Broce said. “They want government officials to come in, identify some entity that can come in and responsibly and independently test their water, and then for us to have a broader, longer conversation about what the right threshold should be.”
Dealing with ethylene oxide emissions, she said, has taught Kemp staffers that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency may not be the be-all, end-all when it comes to determining the safest level of exposure to substances like hexavalent chromium.
All of this means that those other bills to seal coal ash ponds may not move this year — but might in 2021.
“This is the first year that we’ve really seen some traction. But you never, never, never give up,” said Dink NeSmith, president of Community Newspapers, Inc., a chain of small publications. He is also sole owner of The Press-Sentinel in Jesup, not far from the Georgia coast.
His community’s experience with coal ash began in January 2016, when a local environmental lobbyist, on the ninth day of a 30-day public comment period, noted an application before the U.S. Corps of Engineers for four, one-mile long railroad spurs leading into the local private landfill.
The rail lines were to bring in as much as 10,000 tons of coal ash per day. Within 21 days, Wayne County was to become the coal ash capital of the U.S.
The newspaper retained a team of environmental attorneys. “We published a 20-page special edition, all about coal ash,” NeSmith said. The paper has done this two more times since.
When NeSmith found out that billionaire Bill Gates was the largest stockholder in Republic Services Inc., the parent company of the landfill, he reached out to former President Jimmy Carter, who sent Gates a hand-written note of protest.
It was an incredible effort by a twice-a-week publication. “That’s what newspapers do. You got to pump iron with your ink when you need to,” NeSmith said. “If you can’t stand up for the people and the places you love, you should be ashamed to look in the mirror.”
Jesup and Republic Services have declared a truce. No new rail lines have been built. No coal ash has been delivered.
The Press-Sentinel, which endorsed Kemp in the race for governor, was first published in 1865. It was the first newspaper NeSmith owned. He was born only a few blocks over, 71 years ago. Though he now lives close to Athens, the family homestead is still in Jesup.
You saw the answer that Clay Tippins gave when I asked him to make the conservative case for dealing with Georgia’s coal ash problem. Tippins also said that the cancer rate among his neighbors “brought Passover night” to mind.
I put the same question to NeSmith. He, too, went biblical.
“In our swamp, on our own personal property, we’ve got cypress trees that a University of Georgia forester said were growing there, in that swamp, when Christopher Columbus discovered America,” NeSmith said. “Go down through the swamp a little bit more, and there’s a humongous cypress tree that this forester says was here when Jesus was praying in the garden of Gethsemane. Why wouldn’t you want to stand up and protect something like that?”
The newspaperman expressed business concerns, too, noting that a stream through the local landfill sends fresh water to marshland near St. Simons Island. “We can’t afford to be feeding tourists shrimp that tastes like coal ash. The stuff is going downhill,” NeSmith said.
NeSmith has a book in the works that will contain the hundreds of columns he and others have written on the topic of coal ash in the last four years. He’s waiting for a last chapter that will allow him to declare victory.
But he’s already settled on a title: “Kicking Ash & Taking Names.”
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