Coal Dump!

We went to Dairyland Powers informational meeting last night. Not very exciting, our local power supplier relies mainly on two old coal burning plants. They decided or were forced to install a scrubber to remove pollution from the exhaust. It involves injecting large amounts of lime into the stack to attract, soak up sulfur, nitrates, mercury, titanium, etc. So when previously they could sell their ash to be mixed with cement, now it is not suitable for that use and they want to creat a new landfill to 'store' it until they find a use for it. They take it out of the air and risk contaminating the ground water with it, not much of an improvement! Unfortunately the place they want to condemn to put it is in the middle of an organic farming community. It is several, probably 5 miles from here, but up-wind and almost up-stream from us and is on and adjacent to other organic farms. They don't have a clue about the strength of the organic customers, but what was more disturbing was when talking to the chief chemist, it was clear he did not know much about chemistry. The whole group did not instill confidence that they knew what they were doing. The driving force for them was clearly in the words 'lowest immediate cost' as far as tipping fees and transporting. We'll keep you posted as we learn more about the 'proposed dump'!