Late on the evening of January 24, the board of directors at Cobb EMC made an unprecedented about-face, and voted to freeze the EMC’s funding for two coal-fired power plants: Plant Washington and Plant Ben Hill. Without their biggest investor, these coal plants are now more on the ropes than ever. A consortium of utility [...]
Board of Director elections held Saturday, November 12 at Cobb EMC raised the profile of member dissatisfaction with the Atlanta-area utility co-op’s decision-making and leadership to a new level. New board members swept all four seats in the election by huge margins and will be sworn in at today’s Cobb EMC board meeting (Nov. 22, [...]
This blog was written by Eriqah Foreman Williams with input from Amelia Shenstone. On Saturday October 15, free burgers, beautiful weather, and a high school marching band drew Covington, GA residents to an unusual event – a community health fair, including free mercury testing courtesy of SACE. Southern Alliance for Clean Energy partnered with Quad [...]
On August 18, SACE staff and more than 20 allies from around the state took the stand to stop Plant Washington, a new, dirty, coal-fired power plant proposed in Sandersville, GA – vastly outnumbering the plant’s supporters and delivering a strong message of concern about pollution to state regulators. The state Environmental Protection Division (EPD) [...]
This post was authored by Eriqah Foreman Williams, Georgia Coal Diversity Organizer, with input from Amelia Shenstone. On July 21 Snapping Shoals EMC members, with support from SACE and our partners, stood up to the EMC’s board of directors to stop Plant Washington and Plant Ben Hill. Snapping Shoals EMC is one of the Georgia [...]
Communities where coal plants are proposed, like Sandersville, GA often feel divided between protecting their environmental health and creating jobs. Now, with the release of a new report by the Ochs Center for Metropolitan Studies, they are armed with a new tool to assess job claims that may be too good to be true. The [...]
UPDATE: On Jan. 8, the Marietta Daily Journal published an article including SACE and others’ on responses to the indictment. On Thursday, Jan 6, 2011 Dwight Brown, CEO of Cobb EMC, was indicted by a Cobb County Grand Jury on 31 counts of theft, false statement, racketeering, and conspiracy. Cobb EMC is the lead organizer [...]
In welcome and exciting news, the Georgia state court Judge, Ronit Walker, ruled Thursday that the proposed coal-fired Plant Washington air permits are inadequate to protect public health and the environment. According to the ruling, the permit for the proposed 850-MW facility violated Clean Air Act safeguards to limit harmful and toxic air pollution. GreenLaw [...]
In 2008, ten Georgia Electric Membership Corporations (EMCs) joined under the banner “Power4Georgians,” and went public with a proposal to build a new coal-fired power plant in Sandersville, GA, known as Plant Washington. From our perspective, this has been a bad deal for EMC members and the environment from the start, but considering recent trends, [...]
On September 13, SACE, represented by GreenLaw and the Southern Environmental Law Center, and our allies at the Sierra Club Georgia Chapter, Ogeechee Riverkeeper, and Fall-Line Alliance for a Clean Environment (FACE), began the official hearing process in court as part of our legal challenge to Georgia Environmental Protection Division (EPD) air permits for Plant [...]
