This article originally provided by The Times Record

February 18, 2008

Meigs resident shares concerns about proposed AMP-Ohio generating station

By JOE MIZER, T-R Staff Writer

A Meigs County resident took her concerns about environmental effects of a proposed power plant to Dover Sunday afternoon.

Elisa Young, a seventh-generation resident of her 144-acre farm in Meigs

County, spoke to about 27 people during two public

sessions in the Salvation Army Citadel at Dover.

Young appeared at the request of Dover resident Amanda Comstock, who is opposing Dover’s participation in the construction of the American Municipal Power Generating Station on the Ohio River near Pomeroy.

Young, a medical transcriptionist, acknowledged that it was her area’s abundant coal reserves that attracted her Welsh ancestors to the area.
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And yet it’s those coal reserves now being used for the area’s four coal-burning, electricity-producing power plants – and that would be used for five more proposed plants – that have her worried.

Young said she became concerned about the environmental effects of the power plants after noticing an abnormally high rate of cancer in her rural community. She said six of her neighbors recently died of cancer.

And she is starting chemotherapy treatment for a pre-cancerous condition, although she said she has no family history of cancer.

Comstock, who has appeared at two Dover City Council meetings this year to urge council to reconsider its 50-year affiliation with the AMP-Ohio project, reiterated her opposition to the project Sunday.

Comstock has said she’s concerned not only with the costs of the project (which she said Sunday are $2.9 billion) but also the environmental effects.

Young said that in addition to five more power plants, including the AMP Generating Station, construction of a coke plant also is being proposed in her county.

And along with the coke plant, which uses coal for the production of coke, she said residents of her area are facing the prospects of coal being mined from a three-township area over the next 40 years.

Young showed photographs of clear-cutting and the resulting erosion for a proposed surface mine, coal preparation plant, sediment pond, conveyor beltline and sludge impoundment site. She also had photos of tombstones in a local cemetery with their surfaces being eroded by the sulfur dioxide emissions of the current plants.

“I’m not here to say that AMP-Ohio is evil,” Young told the group. She added that the Columbus-based wholesale power supplier is doing “some wonderful things” toward development of renewable energy technologies.

But she’s still quite concerned with the effects of the coal-burning plants and the coal mining operations on her area’s water and air quality, she said.

“How many Meigs County lives does it take to produce one megawatt of electricity?” Young asked.

She told the group, which included Mayor Richard Homrighausen and council members Shane Gunnoe and Marc Cappell, that she would rather see the city invest its money in future electricity-producing technologies and in reducing electric consumption than putting it into the proposed coal-burning power plant.

When asked if Dover’s decision is final, or if there will be further discussion on the issue, Homrighausen said he assumes Comstock will have more to say on the issue at tonight’s City Council meeting and that he would respond at that time.

Young said she will attend the meeting.