Major Florida Coal Plant Cancelled
Tampa, Florida – Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE) applauds Seminole Electric Cooperative’s decision yesterday to abandon the regulatory approval for the construction of a 750 MW coal-fired power plant in Palatka, Florida. Seminole Electric Cooperative submitted a motion yesterday to an administrative law judge stating that they decided “not go forward with construction and operation” of the plant. The power plant, Seminole Unit 3, would have emitted 6.5 million tons of global warming pollution per year and a host of other pollutants such as the neurotoxin, mercury, that affect public health.
“Coal burning power plants are a dirty, nineteenth century technology,” said George Cavros, a Florida-based attorney with Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. “This is the right decision as Florida, and the nation transition to a clean energy economy.”
SACE intervened as a party in cases before the Florida First District Court of Appeals and the Florida Division of Administrative Hearings to challenge the approval of air permits for the proposed power plant. Seminole Unit 3 has been legally challenged numerous times since it was first proposed in 2006 and its rocky and controversial history includes an administrative denial of the air permit by Governor Crist when he first took office in January 2007.
“Seminole now joins over one hundred coal plants that have been cancelled across the United States since 2001; in fact it is likely the 103rd plant to go down as utility companies are seeing the light that coal is the power of the past, not the future,” stated Ulla Reeves, SACE’s regional program director. # # #