Huge news yesterday: Portland General Electric slammed the door on Kinder Morgan’s scheme to build a giant coal export facility on the Columbia River.
The reason? Because PGE agrees with what Sightline has been arguing: coal terminals mean coal dust pollution. And coal dust pollution, Sightline has shown, jeopardizes local health, environment, and economies.
Kinder Morgan, in particular, should not be trusted with coal-handling. The company’s track record is one of pollution, law-breaking, and cover-ups.
So PGE deserves a standing ovation for thwarting Kinder Morgan’s plans to build a coal terminal on port land for which PGE holds a long-term lease. But PGE’s decision is probably less about environmental responsibility than about plain business sense. The utility operates a natural gas plant near the proposed coal site and company officials worry that coal dust would foul the generating equipment. And PGE is right to worry: as Sightline has documented extensively, Kinder Morgan’s coal operations are plagued by escaping coal dust.
If PGE is right that coal dust is too risky for power plants, what might it mean for our lungs? Or for Columbia River fish?
Remember, PGE knows coal. They’ve been handling and burning it for decades at the Boardman Coal Plant in eastern Oregon. They know first-hand how dirty and dangerous it is. Presumably, they know too that coal terminals make terrible neighbors.
Today, we can watch Kinder Morgan’s PR flaks scramble to spin the story, like so:
“The PGE leasehold is only one of those sites. … Nothing has changed. We don’t have a site identified, and we have not put forth a proposal,” Fore said.
Really, Kinder Morgan?
Then why do Kinder Morgan’s own publicity materials identify a specific site? And why do they include a photograph of it labeled “proposed terminal development”?
PGE also raised concerns about coal trains causing congestion around its port sites. It’s an issue that will plague any large coal export plans for the Northwest, and it’s good to see big business begin to draw attention to the problem.
Media coverage today suggests that Kinder Morgan and the Port of St. Helens, Oregon will continue looking for useable coal terminal space, but port officials acknowledge that PGE’s decision is a big step backward for their plans.
Coal terminals are a dirty business as a general matter, but Kinder Morgan is surely among the worst actors in the modern fossil fuel economy:
- In Louisiana, Kinder Morgan’s coal export facilities are so dirty that satellite photos clearly show coal dust pollution spewing into the Mississippi River.
- In South Carolina, coal dust from Kinder Morgan’s terminal contaminates oysters, pilings, and boats. Locals have even caught the company on video washing coal directly into sensitive waterways.
- In Virginia, Kinder Morgan’s coal export terminal is an open sore on the neighborhood, coating nearby homes in dust so frequently that even the mayor is speaking out about the problem.
- In Portland, Kinder Morgan officials bribed a ship captain to illegally dump contaminated material at sea, and their operations have repeatedly polluted the Willamette River.
- Kinder Morgan has been fined by the US government for stealing coal from customer’s stockpiles, lying to air pollution regulators, illegally mixing hazardous waste into gasoline, and many other crimes.
Kinder Morgan would likely make a bad neighbor, so PGE is turning them away. But PGE’s concerns are really broader concerns shared across the Northwest: regardless of who operates them, coal export terminals bring risks of pollution, congestion, and economic impairment.
allison
Stand up against Coal! Sign petitions at no coal eugene, powerpastcoal.org. “Get up, Stand up…Don’t give up the fight”-Marley
Erin Greeson
Excellent piece! Thank you.
just another electricity user
Yes coal is not the best or cleanest source of electricity but >50% of the electricty you and everyone viewing your website comes from coal. To replace that, what immediate solutions would you suggest? Do you want electricity to “skyrocket” as Pres. Obama said? Don’t you think the poor would be hit very hard by very high energy.
Better to push for stringent dust reclamation methods and clean high heat, gasification of coal processing. Along with many current technologies, coal can be better that tar sands and on par with some crude oil extraction.
Less strident preaching and more pragmatism.
Eric de Place
Actually, coal only powers about 42% of American electricity — and that number is dropping like a rock for a variety of reasons. Natural gas and some renewable technologies are beating it on price in the marketplace, and coal plants are facing a huge and costly overhang of liabilities stemming from their numerous threats to public health and the environment.
Any number of immediate solutions come to mind, but all of them would transition the US power sector away from coal at a rate of, say, 2 to 4 percentage points per year until it was all gone. Nothing radical, just a firm commitment to replace the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel with resources we have in abundance such as efficiency, solar, wind, and geothermal.
Would prices skyrocket? Hardly. In fact, ratepayers can even save money by making the cost-effective investments in efficiency that Big Coal is so worried about.
But do you know what does hit poor people hard? Coal.
http://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=electricity_in_the_united_states
just another electricity user
Firm commitment is great and nice to see coal coming down in numbers but I don’t see the “dropping like a rock” at 2 to 4% per year. I want to see your data about renewables beating coal for price per kilowatt/hour. Excepting advanced coal, most renewables are more expensive. But hopefully the renewables downward trend will continue and this will bea moot point.
Have prices come down where you are at? Not here nor anywhere I have seen and once coal’s “huge and costly overhang” is passed to consumers or they go out of business, then your “hardly” statement is dreaming. Driving companies out of business and the subsequent post-employees is not a great method to make us energy independant.
The huge cost is government driven for cleaner emmissions which is fine to a degree as long incentives are in place to get them there.
Your last sentence means nothing without an arguement attached to it.
Natural gas is no panacea as it has its own problems and a short window of usage per well. I like renewables but we certainly can’t drop coal now until we have capacity in other realms. Which we don’t.
My bet is on Thorium reactors in every neighborhood and used onboard ships to transit the seas. Fairly cheap and relatively light load on environment. We’ll see and keep our fingers crossed.
John
Studying up on some oil and gas news, I was transported to your site.. I’m not for oil and gas companies polluting at will with no repercussions.
I went to every one of the Louisiana terminal sites according to Kinder Morgan’s website, and what I found was pretty much what I expected.
Nothing… No signs of “coal dust pollution spewing into the Mississippi River”. I’m not sure where the author of this article got his info, but, after looking into the river pollution statement, I didn’t even look into the statements about the other facilities.
I’m ever bit for whistle blowers calling out companies who don’t play by the rules, but, I’m ever bit against people not checking facts before engaging in slanderous articles.
Eric de Place
John,
I wouldn’t take Kinder Morgan’s word on the matter. Instead, just take a look at satellite imagery of Kinder Morgan’s facility in Louisiana, here: http://www.sightline.org/2012/04/05/the-facts-about-kinder-morgan/.
Eric Hess
In addition to Eric’s comment, the point of this post is that PGE, a coal handler themselves, has decided that, because of coal dust, a Kinder Morgan terminal would make a bad neighbor.
Darrel Whipple
Your second paragraph misrepresents Portland General Electric’s position as reported in the Portland Daily Tribune, the South County Spotlight,The (Longview)Daily News and other sources. PGE made a point of saying they are not commenting on the broader issues, only on the likely deleterious effect that coal dust would have on their power generation equipment and possible problems with railroad congestion at the Clatskanie site. If you are aware of statements by PGE about threats to health, the environment, climate stability, etc., posed by coal dust or coal use, please share those quotes.
Eric de Place
Darrel,
I wish I’d written that paragraph differently the first time around. I’ve gone back and amended it to more accurately reflect PGE’s position.,