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South Carolina’s state-owned Santee Cooper proposes building another coal plant as other states nationwide turn away from the largest contributor to global warming

South Carolina’s state-owned Santee Cooper proposes building another coal plant as other states nationwide turn away from the largest contributor to global warming

By Corey Hutchins

It has been said that as the last remaining Americans who remember the Great Depression die– even the youngest– that time period will be passed into the hands of historians. But in South Carolina echoes from the past reverberate to the present leaving many environmental observers scratching their heads as the state-owned electric and water utility, Santee Cooper (a utility some have called a dinosaur born from that time of blood and violence), makes a symbolic and obstinate gesture backwards in their attempt to build on the Great Pee Dee River yet another massive coal plant.

In what is surely to be remembered as The Green Decade, when the world became more environmentally conscious and even Congress enacted tighter legislation on coal-burning plants, the pulverized coal-fired facility that Santee Cooper has proposed to erect near Kingsburg in Florence County by 2014, a nearly $1 billion, 660-megawatt facility, will release into the environment millions of tons of carbon dioxide per year and could perhaps be— in its own way— in a race against the clock to slam down one of the last coal-fired plants on American soil before both common sense and Congress say enough is enough.

To further illustrate this, a July 25 story in the Wall Street Journal begins with the lead, “From coast to coast, plans for a new generation of coal-fired power plants are falling by the wayside as states conclude that conventional coal plants are too dirty to build and the cost of cleaner plants is too high.”

But not the state of South Carolina. And so it has been, for the past month, Green vs. Black as environmental groups statewide band together and oppose the plant’s construction with the metaphorical questions exploding like hand grenades all around the debate. Will South Carolina, a fire-engine red state with a history of self-consciousness and vulnerability born from poverty, let its state-owned utility run roughshod over the national conscience of progressive Green thinking to advance itself at the expense of the environment?

And will the governor, a man who has illustrated an acute instinct for environmental concern, let his conflicted Libertarian belief of anti-government regulation facilitate a trashing of the very coast on which he owes his election?

Sanford spokesman Joel Sawyer on July 25 told City Paper he would call back with the governor’s take on Santee Cooper’s proposed coal-fired plant. At the time this story went to press on July 31 he had not yet responded.

If the utility continues to go forward with their plan, people like Bob Wislinski, of the Carolina Climate Network, say Santee Cooper really needs to be reformed. They are, he says, “a dinosaur” living in “an alternative universe…another dimension.”

South Carolina, a state already not up to speed on the national level in terms of energy efficiency and education, spews per year about 30 million tons of carbon dioxide into the air (the main source blamed for global warming) and is among the top polluters in the nation when it comes to carbon dioxide explicitly, according to the Associated Press. There are, right now, 13 coal-fired plants in the Palmetto State and while it may be tempting to balance out such an unlucky number, environmental groups on both the state and national level believe we should go in the opposite direction and change the number by subtracting from it, not adding.

All around the South states are turning away from coal-fired energy plants and looking for alternatives. In North Carolina, the utilities commission there rejected one of two 800-megawatt plants and told Duke Energy that they did not need both of them to meet their demands, according to Valerie True of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. In Florida, she says, the largest coal plant proposal in the country was recently shot down. Texas, too, has nixed eight out of 11 attempts to build coal-fired plants by a major utility there as well.

And while both the Democrats and Republicans pick their battles in the national perception for core ideological beliefs, as many guest columns as Gov. Mark Sanford writes in the Washington Post urging the Right to quit ceding the environmental ground to the Left, as long as he and other key Republican officials veto Green legislation or give the wave of the hand to global warming, the debate about the environment on both the state and the national level remains politically divided.

“The change in Congress in the last election may have changed what’s going on,” True says about the national trend to move away from coal. “I think we’ll see fewer proposals [for coal plants] popping up.”

But Santee Cooper is unique when it comes to utility companies because it is owned entirely by the state. As a state-owned entity Santee Cooper is not obligated to demonstrate in any regulated forum that their proposals for building plants are absolutely necessary, and they lack the state-regulatory oversight to which other utilities must comply. They do require certain permits from the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control, like air permits, but Wislinski is one to say that Santee Cooper has “never met an emission they didn’t want to give off” and that DHEC is notorious for greasing the palm when it comes to issuing permits.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has required an Environmental Impact Statement study (EIS) but because they are federal and DHEC is state, DHEC does not have to wait until the study is complete before issuing the permits. And while South Carolina has always been traditionally “states’ rights,” some environmental groups are afraid DHEC will issue the permits to Santee Cooper before the EIS study is complete simply because they can.

On July 23 DHEC spokesman Tom Berry told City Paper “We’re not anywhere close to making a decision” about whether or not they will issue the air quality construction permit that Santee Cooper needs before they can begin construction.

Berry said DHEC is deciding whether or not to wait for the feds to complete the EIS study before they make their decision, but also made clear they are not required to do that. For now they are holding off on their decision on whether or not to wait because of requests from environmental groups, he said.

When asked if he knew whether DHEC had ever rejected a permit to Santee Cooper in the past, Berry said he had “no idea” but it wouldn’t surprise him to find out they hadn’t.

That would be because when DHEC receives an application that looks like it won’t pass muster they meet with the applicant or the consulting engineer, he said. More often than not, the applicant then will withdraw the permit, fix it, or change it so it can meet approval.

So while DHEC may not ever have rejected a permit from Santee Cooper the reason may just be that Santee Cooper knows how to play the game— they’ve been in it long enough.

Blan Holman is an environmental attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center who has been looking into Santee Cooper and the proposed coal-fired plant on the Pee Dee.

“What is troublesome,” he says about Santee Cooper, “is the lack of oversight that comes with it in South Carolina.”

As a state-owned utility steeped in the hardscrabble history of South Carolina— and with perhaps the most effective lobbying group at the State House— Santee Cooper seems to operate with carte blanche to build what it wants where it wants it without having their proposals vetted in any regulatory forum.

But environmental groups aren’t the only ones looking at Santee Cooper or their coal plant proposal with a squinting eye.

South Carolina State Sen. John Courson, a Republican who chairs the governor’s Climate, Energy and Commerce Advisory Committee, doesn’t want to call the proposed plant a “divisive issue”— he says it’s more complicated than that.

“I’m not sure coal-fired plants are the way to go,” he told City Paper. “In South Carolina or nationally.”

Courson also says he doesn’t fault what Santee Cooper is doing on the whole but retains what the calls a “philosophical difference” with the issue of coal-fired plants. He said we should look to France when it comes to energy and that nuclear is the way to go.

For their part, Santee Cooper spokeswoman Molly Gore says the utility is exploring some nuclear options.

“We’re [also] considering wind,” she said.

Gore also said coal is the most abundant resource and Santee Cooper has a mandate to deliver affordable energy to their customers, which is the reason the utility was created. She said that each Santee Cooper unit built has the best environmental control technology at the time they built it and stressed that Santee Cooper offers the only active conservation programs of S.C. utilities.

As for why the utility is proposing a coal-fired plant while other states have turned against it in a time of national sympathy towards global warming, Gore said “cost efficiencies are at the forefront.”

And while future cost is always easier to quantify than environmental impact— and while environmental groups could surely turn the comment into an illustration of the ‘purse over planet’ mentality— Gore says of Santee Cooper, “We’re doing everything we can to strike a balance.”

In the academic arena, Dr. Greg Carbone, an associate professor in USC’s department of geography with a special interest in climate change and impacts, says that while he applauds Santee Cooper for having Green programs (that most private utility companies don’t offer) they could work harder to promote them. Representatives from Santee Cooper say less than 1 percent of their customers take part in the programs. The way that the proposed “dirty coal plant” is being handled, Carbone believes, is “heavy handed,” and he is also suspicious of the unique fashion in which the utility operates in regard to a lack of regulatory oversight.

Off the record, during lunches or behind closed doors, private South Carolina utility companies such as Duke and Progress privately loath Santee Cooper for their freedom from regulation and also that they pay zippo in local property taxes. (Santee Cooper did however drop double-digit millions into the state’s general fund last year, according to Gore.)

Bob Wislinksi knows because he’s heard it all. He also knows that while Santee Cooper has no accountability with any regulatory agency, their proposals need to be vetted in the public forum, i.e. press releases from environmental group to environmental group, or by public meetings and media exposure.

“Stupid ideas die if you oppose them long enough,” he says.

It was just this kind of public inspection that caused about 300 people to crowd into the Hannah-Pamplico High School in Florence County earlier this month to attend a public hearing about the proposed plant.

Representatives for Santee Cooper said their proposal is environmentally safe and economical.

But “there are people in Florence who have spoken out about the mercury,” said Nancy Cave, the Coastal Carolina League’s north coast director. Cave says the plant will have a “severe environmental and human impact” and is pegged for a “rural area where it is likely there would be less opposition.”

Cave paints a picture of mile-long trains passing daily by churches as they carry coal to the plant. She warns of mercury seeping into the nearby rivers and 93 acres of wetlands being impacted and thousands of tons of soot and smog-forming pollutants blasting into the air. The plant, she says, will draw 28 million gallons of water from the Pee Dee per day.

When asked if she considered Santee Cooper a dinosaur Cave said, “I think Santee Cooper is using old technology and not doing a thorough alternative study. I think it’s time they looked at alternatives.”

Bob Guild, chairman of the S.C. Sierra Club, agrees.

“We’re pressing them to be leaders in new conservation,” he says, “and aggressively exhaust the use of alternative energy.”

Calling the state-owned utility a “classic representation of a missed opportunity,” Guild says since Santee Cooper was created in the 1930s because the private utilities weren’t interested in supplying power to the rural areas of South carolina— and Santee Cooper did light up the darkest corners of the state— in that same tradition they should now take the opportunity to be a leader in creating alternative energy.

Santee Cooper remains heavy on their obligation to provide affordable power to their customers and coal is cheap. On its face the economical argument works. Nuclear power is expensive and the utility does offer inexpensive rates to their customers. But while dollars-per-kilowatt-hours are easy to measure, what is not is the environmental impact. To be frank, if Santee Cooper is providing an affordable service to the poor it is also those same poor who are fishing for food— because they have to— in the rivers that Santee Cooper will poison with mercury because of the plant.

For now South Carolina remains a battleground of ideology and interpretation and the symbolism of it seems drawn from the minds of fiction writers. We are seven years away from 2014 and a lot can happen before then. As of now no groundbreaking in the Pee Dee has taken place and if the environmentalists get their way the ground will remain unbroken— at least for the use of mashing up and burning coal. But as some observers see it as “just another coal plant,” others, like Wislinksi, see it as leverage for a larger cause— the reformation of “dinosaurs” like Santee Cooper.