This is a nice piece of news. Hopefully the folks in Meigs County, OH will have a good holiday this year in celebrating the cancellation of this proposed plant.
Meigs is ranked as one of the most polluted counties in the country as southeast Ohio is already the site of many coal plants. Nov. 25, 2009 was the day construction on the plant was set to begin, but instead it was the day that AMP announced the cancellation.
In the past few years, many groups had taken action to stop this proposed plant.
American Municipal Power will not build coal-fired power plant
November 25, 2009, 11:54AM
American Municipal Power, the largest supplier of power to Cleveland, will announce at noon today that it has canceled its coal-fired 1,000-megawatt power plant on the Ohio River in Meigs County.The main reason: escalating prices that have put the cost of the plant close to $4 billion. Two years ago, the estimated cost was $2.5 billion.
AMP and its board of trustees, consisting of municipal power system directors, are looking at other fuels, principally natural gas. The board met last week.
AMP did not return phone calls this morning.
Cleveland Public Power marketing director Shelley Shockley confirmed the decision. “The coal-fired plant will not go forward,” she said. “The site will be reconfigured for the production of power, but the form of generation has not been determined.”
AMP is a wholesale supplier to more than 100 municipal systems. Cleveland had contracted to buy 185 megwatts worth of power from the 1,000-megawatt plant. The city’s total power demand is in excess of 300 megawatts.
Subscribe!
Subscribe by RSS!
Share on Facebook
This is a sweet victory. The hundreds of people who have worked hard on this campaign deserve some appreciation. I was part of my first direct action organizing and planning on this campaign, when we did a sit-in at the headquarters. The sit-in ended successfullly – we actually met with the president and he agreed to organize a board meeting with the trustees and local residents of our choosing. He later backed down from that promise.
Keep up the great work Ohio
Bravo Meigs County organizers! This is a long, hard-fought victory. I visited Meigs County three times over the past four years and was impressed both by the amount of polluting facilities locals have to live with and the strength of the conviction of those opposing the new plants. There is still a long way to go, but this victory is a great step!
dun, dun, dun, another one bites the dust!
From the Point Pleasant Register . . .
It was estimated that AMP’s project would contribute more than $20 million to the local economy on an annual basis. With this type of hole to fill, many residents and local officials are wondering, “what now?”
There seems to be no clear answer at the moment though “what might’ve been” is obvious to most when it comes to what the plant could have meant in terms of economic development.
For the past four years, hopes have been high for the American Municipal Power Generating Station (AMPGS) and the jobs and economic development it was predicted to bestow on Meigs County which has been struggling with high unemployment rates. Ironically, Meigs County received some good news this month following the release of the latest state unemployment figures which showed the county’s unemployment rate dropped from 15.1 percent in September, to 14.5 percent in October.
The AMPGS, a 1,000-megawatt facility, would have provided 1,600 construction jobs during the 4 1/2 year construction project. Once on line, it would have employed 165 full-time operators, including 15 at an adjacent fertilizer plant run by The Andersons. The Andersons would have taken some waste from the plant and recycled it into material for commercial fertilizer.
The Southern Local School District stood to benefit from the AMPGS, which was to be located in its district and cost in excess of $3 billion to build, not mention the predicted influx of a workers to the area, some with children, who might have enrolled in the district.
Todd, very interesting comments related to the benefits of such a project. I too was one Ohioan counting on the plant which was to include cutting edge carbon capture technology. Our company is a manufacturer, heavy equipment for heavy industry. We are a dying breed but what will America do when we are all gone? The service industry cannot survive alone, we need heavy industry no matter how ugly it may look to some.
The fabricated steel construction our company could have provided for the Meigs plant would have been in the neighborhood of 6-10 million pounds which would have provided work for 60 persons at our shop for up to 2 years. Imagine that, one small part of the overall project would have provided 54 man years of labor.
Is it a good thing a coal project was stopped? I doubt it. Nearly every source of energy has a polluting side effect and if suggest how clean solar is, take a look a the manufacturing process of the silicon crystal, the growing process, nasty nasty nasty. And keep in mind that a nasty aluminum smelter somewhere had to produce the aluminum for the frames.
Coal, natural gas, nuclear, wind, solar, biomass… we need it all. We are energy pigs and there will never be enough. Conservation must also play a part and because we as free americans are so undisaplined that I suppose it will require yet another new law to make it happen.
Thank you for your efforts and your success! IPCC scientists now tell us that Climate Change is progressing even faster than their worst case 2007 scenario (Scenario 2 B). World leaders met in Copenhagen and did nothing. Citizens: it’s up to us! Peaceful blockade of coal fired power plants and the trains carrying coal, works. In England, protests led to a ban on construction of any new coal fired plants. Hurray! Let’s get organized and repeat this success across the country. Getting off coal is the key issue. The last time I joined in direct action was in 1972. 5,000 Chicago area citizens stopped construction of the Crosstown Expressway, a planned 22-mile nightmare planned right through the heart of the city. It would have torn down the homes of 10,000 people. It’s been a long time, and I’m a lot older, but I won’t sit on my hands, and watch our leaders destroy our biosphere. We will not abandon construction workers and coal miners, who lose jobs because of the change from coal. You are not the enemy. New, greener projects will need to be built. Join the struggle. E-mail dow2200@yahoo.com. Please use “Stop Coal” for a subject. I will respond.