Image via WikipediaUPDATE:Today, Sept. 1st, DEQ opened a 30-day comment period on proposed emission controls and closure options for Portland General Electric’s coal-fired power plant in Boardman. DEQ’s three options outline the pollution controls necessary for plant closure in 2015-16, 2018 or 2020. PGE has also submitted a new alternative 2020 closure plan for comment. PGE’s alternative proposal for 2020 is similar to DEQ’s 2018 option. DEQ invites comment on both its rule proposal and PGE’s alternative proposal.
The comment period ends Oct. 1, 2010, at 5 p.m. There will be five public hearings held later this month. For more information on this proposed rulemaking, hearing locations, and how to submit comments, please visit our DEQ Regulation of PGE Boardman web page.
ORIGINAL:
PGE has shown its true colors now, neatly cutting through all its many layers of greenwash and self-promotion for its "green power" plans that are minuscule next to its coal power portfolio.
The private utility is now threatening to attempt to keep running the Boardman coal plant, the single largest Oregon source of the CO2 that is destabilizing the global climate RIGHT NOW, until 2040.
The definition of a terrorist is someone who uses violence and threats of violence against noncombatants in order to persuade opponents to give in to the terrorist's demands.
Because disrupting the climate is already leading to deaths and aggravating the conditions that accompany and worsen global violence (famines, droughts, collapse of fisheries, depletion of aquifers, etc.), PGE's conscious, premeditated threat to keep running Boardman for decades after the company's own analysis shows that it should be closed is simple extortion, extortion that threatens harm to billions of people if carried out. In other words, it's simple terrorism.
Here in Salem, we have a PGE corporate director among us, the President of Willamette University, which likes to promote itself as environmentally hip and advanced. I hope every single Willamette alum, faculty, staff, parent, and student who wants to have a shot at a stable climate, for themselves and for any children they care about, will ask Dr. Pelton why they should bother with any of that when the state's biggest polluter --- the firm he directs --- chooses to keep sending millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere rather than see power rates increase a whole four-tenths of a cent per kWh.
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