Sued by the Sierra Club, the EPA was urged to adopt one of four options pertaining to the aforementioned proposition. If the rules are drawn correctly, the EPA estimates that pollutant discharges would be reduced by 470 million to 2.62 billion pounds, and reduce water usage by 50 billion to 103 billion gallons per year. With such monumental changes, future energy costs could be drastically reduced while the pollutant count would also be cut. However, the cost of upgrading individual power plants to reach this goal would cost millions of dollars, from the already stretched federal budget. In the end, do you believe that such reform is necessary? Are the millions of dollars being invested in this program worth it? Could the money be better spent for other situations?
3 comments:
Upon reading the articles, it became apparent that this debate only centers on power plants using coal, that generally use the water to scrub the contaminants from exhaust gases from the burning of coal. While it is always good to reduce pollutants and water usage, there are more variables that need consideration before passing judgment on the legitimacy of the reform.
One of the articles from the post mentioned that "[c]oal is under mounting pressure from cheap natural gas" (Drajem), which brings up an important issue. Natural gas tends to be cheaper and cleaner than coal and readily available; in that regard, it appears that the best answer to this question is to switch the coal burning power plants to natural gas burning plants. While this project would provide employment in the construction sector, it could endanger certain state's economies, which are based on mining and using their own cheap coal. Additionally, when constructing a new power plant, the old one must continue to run (since people still want power during the construction period), so it is not a quick process to switch from coal to natural gas. However, switching to natural gas would prevent these power plants from becoming obsolete if the use of coal were ever to stop (which would render the current upgrades useless). What is also interesting is that one of the Sierra Club's goals according to their website is to close down "dirty" coal burning plants (http://content.sierraclub.org/coal/), so unless this renovation changes the coal burning plants into clean coal burning plants the Sierra Club will work to close the coal burning plants.
As Kurtis noted, the project is very costly, but the question that I would like answered is who will fund this project and how will they fund it? Is it paid through a rate payer tax? And should the government even be the ones paying for it?
So, this issue does not have an easy answer, but considering more of the variables should help us and law makers understand the trade offs between these modes of energy creation.
I agree with Kathryn--although I commend the EPA's attempt to address the harmful discharge created by coal-powered plants, it may seem a better option to use the money that would go into reforming these plants for better reforms, such as switching these steam electrical power plants to run on more environmentally-friendly options such as natural gas or a form of renewable energy.
Although I understand that any kind of change will be tedious and costly, I believe that reform is absolutely necessary. The harmful toxins released into the water not only affects the public health (like Kurtis mentioned in the article), but also harms the marine life. Even slight changes to the composition of the water can quickly extinguish thousands of fish and aquatic plants. Notwithstanding, the sheer cost of reform and other issues plaguing the nation today may cause both politicians and citizens to not regard environmental reform as a priority (although personally, I think everyone should care about whether they are drinking mercury, arsenic, lead, and selenium).
On a side note, I would greatly appreciate it if someone could post an article about the recent tumultuous events in Boston following Monday's bombings. It has consistently been top news in the nation (and making headlines worldwide), and I'm sure many of us have a lot to say about it.
On the issue of environmental conservation, I think most people agree that it would be nice to reduce pollutants. However, with the current technology, it is very costly to implement a very efficient system into our current one. Yes, we do save a lot of money in doing so, but those are all long term effects. I personally think that there are many ways to reduce pollutants using less expensive methods that also provide results. For example, the agencies can provide simple filters or a cleaner and more efficient fuel source.
Overall, in my opinion, the costly technology that would reduce a great amount of pollutants is simply not worth the investment. There are many more ways to spend such money and rather than jumping right to a highly effective yet expensive system, I think we should build our way there, investing in other opportunities while also reducing pollutants over time.
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