Coal-Powered Plant Is Nearer To Approval

There is a proposal to build a new power plant near Corpus Christi on the Texas Gulf coast.   The plant will be powered by coal -- one of the dirtiest and polluting methods of producing energy that exists.   Texas already pollutes the air more than any other state in the Union (and more than all but six countries), so it is really amazing that the energy industry wants to build even more coal-powered plants in the state (which is already exceeding EPA standards for air pollution).

Environmentalists have opposed the building of the plant because they say it will pump more medically-unsafe "particulate matter" into Texas skies.   On Wednesday, a panel of administrative law judges agreed with the environmentalists.   They recommended the plant not be granted a permit.

The panel said the developers of the project could not "ensure that emissions from the proposed facility would not contribute to air pollution."   They believed the facility would not meet federal standards of the Clean Air Act.

Now that may sound to some like a roadblock has just been thrown up that would prevent the building of the polluting plant.   Not so.   Remember, this is Texas -- where the Republican-controlled government is a friend to energy producers and other polluting corporations.   This just means the plant is one step closer to being built.

The proposal will now go to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), and the TCEQ is under no obligation to follow the recommendation of the administrative law panel.   The TCEQ has the authority to approve the plant and give it a permit regardless of what anyone thinks.   And since the TCEQ is little more than a government front for the energy industry, the odds are that this new plant will soon be dumping pollutants into the Gulf coast air.

For those of you who doubt this, remember that the TCEQ has already approved the dumping of radioactive waste in West Texas -- in an area directly over the Ogallala Aquifer, which supplies clean water to at least seven states.   The driving force behind TCEQ decisions is corporate profits and not citizen safety.