It was too costly (read unhappy stock holders AND consumers) to put in place the more stringent technology to burn the more readily available higher-sulphur coal in power plants along the Massachusetts coast.
So they went south–to Columbia, South America–where laws were more corporation friendly, operating expenses were cheap and human lives expendable.
Excerpt from “The Dirty Story Behind Local Energy” by Aviva Chomsky:
Surface, or open-pit, mines pose different risks. Whole ecosystems are destroyed when miles of land are dug up to access the coal underneath it. In the Guajira, rivers and streams have been diverted, desertification has spread, and whole species – such as the iguana and the howling monkey – have disappeared or been supplanted.
Too often, these ecosystems include people who are simply deemed dispensable by the mining companies, the power companies that buy the coal, and the consumers of electricity produced by the power companies. In Colombia, these are indigenous Wayuu and Afro-Colombian people who have inhabited the desert of La Guajira for hundreds or even thousands of years.
And among those who benefit from their displacement might well be you.
The Cerrejón coal mine has been operating in the region since the 1980s, extracting more than two million tons of coal a month. All of the coal is exported, 20 percent to the United States – most of it to fire East Coast power plants.
Stopping by to say hello. The coal mining thing has always been a tearing and sad issue for me. I grew up in West Virginia and come from a family of coal miners. It is difficult for rural communities who depend on the mining industries to see past their own employment and economy into the future results to the land.
Hi Fred, I met you at the meeting we had a few weeks ago concerning Crystal Creek Dr. I told you you were one of my favorite writers, we usually remember compliments! I just saw your Fragments online while I was reading the paper, so now I want to tell you that you are also an amazing photographer! And if you ever teach writing, please contact me, I also love to write, but would love to learn your slant on writing. Thanks for all your wisdom.
Lucy
I’ve had other folks suggest I teach a nature writing and/or photography class. It’s an interesting thought but I would be starting from absolute square 1 putting something like that together and feel very awkwardly presumptuous thinking I had any credentials to present myself as a teacher for those realms. But who knows–maybe some day.
It looks as if, finally, we might be prepared to start thinking about beginning to reconsider coal and all its costs. I’ll believe it when I see it, and do what little I can to encourage it.
Hi Fred,
Lucy forwrd’d your posting and I’d like to urge you to capsulize it as a Ltr to the Editor of the Times and the Star-Sentinel. Of course, I’d like to see it come down on the side of banning spraying in Roa Co… We need the Bd of Supvsrs to read smart opinions like yours. Thnx