{"id":1219,"date":"2011-12-12T12:06:08","date_gmt":"2011-12-12T17:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/no-coal-plant-in-early-county-ls-power-withdraws-all-permit-requests.html"},"modified":"2011-12-12T12:06:08","modified_gmt":"2011-12-12T17:06:08","slug":"no-coal-plant-in-early-county-ls-power-withdraws-all-permit-requests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/no-coal-plant-in-early-county-ls-power-withdraws-all-permit-requests.html","title":{"rendered":"No coal plant in Early County: LS Power withdraws all permit requests"},"content":{"rendered":"Persistence by the local community\nand environmental groups has paid off in Early County, Georgia:\nthe company that wanted to build a coal plant there has given up.\n

\nPress release from GreenLaw, 6 December 2011,\n\nLongleaf Defeat Marks End to Nation\u2019s Longest Running Fight Against Coal Plant<\/a>: Agreement Marks Milestone of 160 Coal Plants Canceled,<\/a>\n

\nThe country’s longest-running campaign against construction of a new\n\n<\/a>\ncoal plant ended today as LS Power, a New Jersey-based power company,\nannounced that it will cancel plans to build the Longleaf Energy Station\nin Blakely, GA. Sierra Club, Friends of the Chattahoochee and GreenLaw\nhave been organizing against the Longleaf coal plant since it was first\nproposed in 2001. This victory comes as part of a legal agreement between\nLS Power and Sierra Club.\n

\nThis victory marks the 160th proposed coal plant canceled since\nSierra Club launched its Beyond Coal campaign in 2005. This victory is\nparticularly noteworthy because the struggle lasted for a decade and\ninvolved numerous hearings and appeals, and sustained local opposition by\nhundreds of Georgia residents. Longleaf was one of the very first plants\nproposed when, in 2001, the coal industry attempted to block clean energy\ndevelopment by building more than 150 new coal plants across the US,\na move which would have effectively locked the nation into dependence\non coal-fired electricity for the foreseeable future. Longleaf was one\nof the last remaining new coal projects proposed anywhere in the United\nStates, counting 160 proposals that have now been defeated or abandoned\nin the past decade.\n

\nSeveral times over the past decade it looked like LS Power would move\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n

\nforward with its proposed coal plant, but local residents continued\ntheir opposition through multiple tactics, including holding a call-in\nday this past June when more than 250 Georgians called LS Power asking\nthe CEO to cancel the proposal.\n

\n“This is not just a victory for the individuals and organizations\nfighting this plant, but also for all Georgians, who are now safe from\na major new source of toxic air pollution,” said Colleen Kiernan,\nDirector of the Georgia Chapter of the Sierra Club. “This victory\nrepresents our best work: combining the power of the courts, the power\nof the people and the power of the press.”\n<\/blockquote>\nAnd not just theoretically for all Georgians and beyond:\n

\nThe announcement comes as part of a nationwide agreement with Sierra\nClub that also requires LS Power to abandon its proposed Plum Point 2\ncoal plant in Arkansas and imposes strict new limits on air pollution\nfrom the new Sandy Creek coal plant in Texas. The agreement requires the\ncompany to withdraw all requests for permits in Georgia and Arkansas,\nand that any issued permits be rescinded or revoked.\n<\/blockquote>\nWell done!\n

\nAnd more to do:\n

\nSierra Club, GreenLaw, and several other environmental and public\nhealth organizations continue to fight the two remaining coal plant\nproposals in Georgia proposed by POWER4Georgians in Central and Southeast\nGeorgia. These groups’ work to transition Georgia off of imported coal\nand onto homegrown clean energy like wind and solar is part of a national\neffort involving unprecedented collaboration by more than a hundred\norganizations nationwide. Over the past decade this national campaign\nhas stopped 160 proposed coal plants and secured record investments in\nclean energy. Since November 2008 only one coal plant has broken ground\nanywhere in the United States, a highly-subsidized project in Mississippi.\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n-jsq\n

\nPS: Owed to Roy H. Taylor.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Persistence by the local community and environmental groups has paid off in Early County, Georgia: the company that wanted to build a coal plant there has given up. Press release from GreenLaw, 6 December 2011, Longleaf Defeat Marks End to Nation\u2019s Longest Running Fight Against Coal Plant: Agreement Marks Milestone of 160 Coal Plants Canceled, […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97,556,141,216,40,16,20],"tags":[2043,8753,1951,1624,3280,8701,2739,3279,2734,8713,34,8714,8716],"class_list":["post-1219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-air","category-co2","category-coal","category-community","category-environment","category-law","tag-clean","tag-coal","tag-early-county","tag-energy","tag-friends-of-the-chattahoochee","tag-georgia","tag-greenlaw","tag-ls-power","tag-power4georgians","tag-renewable-energy","tag-sierra-club","tag-solar","tag-wind"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-jF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1219\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}