It’s Getting Hot In Here

In Oregon and southern Washington, the youth-led branch of the fight to close the Boardman Coal Plant has soared to heights in just the last month.  Building on work done last fall, which included turning youth out in force to the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s hearings in different parts of the region, the youth movement to end coal burning at Boardman has in many ways shifted to the campus level.  

Youth are spreading the word about Boardman to their peers and members of the surrounding community about Boardman Coal through a flurry of events, letter to the editor-writing parties, rallies, marches, and probably other things I haven’t heard about yet!  From Southern Oregon University in the just north of the California border, to Clark College in Vancouver, Washington, the youth voice is ringing loud and clear: we want clean energy, not coal in the Northwest.

During the first week in March, students and Lane Community College in Eugene enjoyed “Coal Free Education Week” in the campus cafeteria, and learned from youth OSPIRG organizers about the effects of burning coal at Boardman on the Northwest’s health and environment.  Just weeks before, Lane C.C. and Reed College in Portland passed student government resolutions calling for Boardman’s closure by 2014, and the replacement of coal use with clean, renewable power.

 On February 24th, students at Clark College wrote letters to the Clark County Columbian urging state action to curb pollution from coal plants in the absence of federal leadership (one of which ran in the Columbian the following week!).  The last weekend in February, Linfield College students marched for a clean energy future, added their names to a petition to close Boardman by 2014, and built new skills in organizing and activism at Power Shift Linfield.  On March 6th, the youth-organized Washington County Sustainability Summit at Pacific University brought together both students and community members for a day-long dialogue about breaking our area’s ties to dirty fuel sources like coal.

Through an announcement that it would consider shutting down Boardman by the year 2020, it seems the plant’s owner, Portland General Electric (PGE), hoped to diffuse criticism for keeping our region saddled to coal-fired electricity.  Yet for those of us suffering from the plant’s pollution in Oregon and southern Washington, ten more years of burning coal at Boardman is more than we can afford.  Under the proposed 2020 shutdown plan, Boardman would not only have time to add another thirty million tons of carbon to the atmosphere – PGE would also request a waiver for pollution controls that it otherwise must install at Boardman by 2014. 

It’s time to shut down Oregon’s largest single of carbon emissions, second largest source of mercury pollution, and a major contributor to smog and acid rain in the Columbia River Gorge – not by 2020, but by 2014 at the latest.  It’s time for PGE to listen to the youth of today who will have to deal with the effects of Boardman’s pollution for decades to come.  It’s time to get serious about the Northwest’s clean energy future, and decommission Oregon’s only coal plant.