Activists gather outside Senator Casey’s office after delivering over 4,800 petitions.
Out of curiosity, what did you get for ‘Christmas in July’? This year, we decided that Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey should get a big box of coal and over 4,800 petitions collected by our friends over at CREDO. Why? Because he, along with Senator Pat Toomey and Representative Charlie Dent, asked the EPA to delay action against the old, polluting Portland Generating Station. Our Pennsylvanian legislators are standing up for the profits of the plant’s owner, Houston-based energy company GenOn, rather than the health of their constituents right here in PA, and that is unacceptable.
The Portland coal plant, directly across from New Jersey on the Delaware River, is one of the oldest and dirtiest plants in the county. It emits more air pollution than every coal plant in New Jersey combined. The plant’s pollution has been blowing across state lines, causing massive air quality issues for several counties in northwest New Jersey. The pollution has gotten so bad that New Jersey has sued the Portland plant in hopes of forcing it to install readily available pollution controls. GenOn has thus far been unwilling to act unless compelled by the law.
But we all know that wind doesn’t blow in only one direction. The air pollution caused by this plant is just as much a problem for Pennsylvania as it is for New Jersey (check out the map at the end of this report from the New Jersey DEP to see how bad the pollution is). So why aren’t Sens. Casey and Toomey calling for the same life-saving action as New Jersey Sens. Menendez and Lautenberg?
Sens. Casey and Toomey claim it’s due to jobs, but I think Sen. Menendez puts it best in his letter to the EPA:
“We must not allow polluters to set our priorities. Doing so would risk not only our health and that of future generations, it would risk the promise of a green economy built on clean energy jobs, energy efficiency innovations, and reduced waste and pollution.”
According to the Clean Air Task Force, the Portland Plant causes 30 deaths, 54 heart attacks and 500 asthma attacks every single year. Even with the proposed action from the EPA, the plant would continue to dump harmful climate-changing pollution into our air and hundreds of thousands of tons of coal ash into improperly lined quarries. That is unacceptable. There is only one way to clean this plant up. It is time to shut this old dirty plant down for good and move Pennsylvania toward a clean, renewable future.
