{"id":4612,"date":"2019-02-13T12:47:17","date_gmt":"2019-02-13T18:47:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/?p=4612"},"modified":"2019-02-14T17:16:53","modified_gmt":"2019-02-14T23:16:53","slug":"a-coal-to-diesel-refinery-is-the-last-straw-for-these-indianans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/?p=4612","title":{"rendered":"A Coal-to-Diesel Refinery Is the Last Straw for These Hoosiers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

February 13, 2019 by Susan Cosier  in Our Stories\/Midwest Dispatch at NRDC<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The air in southwestern Indiana is bad enough without the emissions from yet another proposed polluter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A billboard on Interstate 64 in southwestern Indiana making it clear how area residents feel about another coal plant in the region. Hele Productions<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A towering billboard in southwestern Indiana greets drivers heading west on Interstate 64: \u201cGovernor Holcomb, please\u2014No rotten egg smell! No more super polluters! No coal-to-diesel in Dale!\u201d And adorning lawns across Spencer County are bright-yellow posters that read #NOC2D. The signs began going up last spring, about a month before the town council in the small farming community of Dale set aside more than 500 acres of cornfield for a $2.5 billion refinery that would convert coal to diesel fuel. The message is clear: Local residents don\u2019t want the plant\u2014or the cancer-causing and climate-warming emissions that would come with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One thing southwestern Indiana doesn\u2019t need more of is air pollution, says John Blair, an environmental activist who runs the nonprofit Valley Watch. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency\u2019s Toxics Release Inventory<\/a>, Spencer County ranks in the country\u2019s top 1 percent for toxic substances that billow into the air.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Often called a \u201csacrifice zone\u201d by locals, this corner of the state is already home to four so-called super polluters<\/a> within a 50-mile radius. (All four are coal-fired power plants.) According to a permit drafted in December by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM), the new diesel refinery would add millions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere every year. The plant would also release nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and fine particulate matter<\/a> at levels that the EPA considers significant, though IDEM says the facility would not violate air-quality standards. Yet what else the plant might emit is unclear since it would be the first of its kind built in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The proposal, submitted by Delaware-based Riverview Energy, still needs the blessing of the EPA, but if approved, the plant would use coal-hydrogenation technology to produce diesel from coal instead of oil. The process, which won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1931, would provide a market for the state\u2019s 17 billion tons of coal reserves. This coal, which is high in sulfur, is generally considered lower quality and especially dirty.<\/a>Congress that we demand new action on climateT<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRiverview Energy thinks that this is going to alter the entire landscape of how we do transportation in the United States,\u201d says Blair, who has worked to stop the development of coal conversion plants for nearly four decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Riverview\u2019s proposal, which has been in the works for more than a year, comes at a time when utilities across the country are shuttering coal plants<\/a>, wind power and solar power are becoming cheaper<\/a>, and Americans are demanding energy sources that don\u2019t mess with their health and the climate. That goes for Indianans, too. In October, one of the state\u2019s largest utility companies, the Northern Indiana Public Service Company, announced that it would eliminate its dependence on coal<\/a> entirely by 2028. That commitment, says Rachel Fakhry<\/a>, a policy analyst for NRDC, \u201cis one of the most progressive not only in the Midwest, but also in the country.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the Energy Information Administration<\/a>, the Midwest\u2019s dependence on energy from coal has decreased significantly over the past decade, from 70 percent in 2010 to less than 50 percent in 2017. The drop is largely due to utilities reviewing their bottom lines and realizing that a switch to cleaner fuels could cut costs and reduce electricity bills for their customers. \u201cThe landscape has changed,\u201d says Fakhry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

IDEM, however, appears to be moving forward with the coal-to-diesel proposal anyway. It says it will address a number of issues the EPA had with its air-quality permit, including how it calculated the plant\u2019s emissions, and file the final permit application later this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The people of Spencer County aren\u2019t backing down either. In December, concerned citizens packed the Heritage Hills High School auditorium and spilled into the hallway. Forty-five people, including Mary Hess, president of the nonprofit Southwestern Indiana Citizens for Quality of Life, spoke out against the refinery. Just seven spoke in support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hess is a former postal worker who began looking more closely at the environmental issues facing her community after she retired in 2013. After founding her organization last March, she set up an online petition<\/a> opposing the plant. So far, more than 2,100 people have signed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A rally in Evansville, Indiana, against a plan by Riverview Energy to build a new coal to diesel power plant in the state, August 2018.  Hele Productions<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In addition to speaking with Riverview Energy and having Indiana health officials take a closer look at the community\u2019s air-quality concerns, Hess\u2019s group wants more air monitors installed around Spencer County. Armed with information from those monitors, they hope to show why the plant would be bad for the county, the state, and the region. Ultimately, she says, \u201cour main goal is to stop it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Living in a country that already exports more diesel than it uses, Hess also questions the need for such a refinery. Sure, the technology \u201cdid win a Nobel Prize,\u201d says Hess, \u201cbut so did the lobotomy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

February 13, 2019 by Susan Cosier  in Our Stories\/Midwest Dispatch at NRDC The air in southwestern Indiana is bad enough without the emissions from yet another proposed polluter. A towering billboard in southwestern Indiana greets drivers heading west on Interstate 64: \u201cGovernor Holcomb, please\u2014No rotten egg smell! No more … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[48,444,25,421,422,28,443,442,29],"class_list":["post-4612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-air-pollution","tag-citizen-activism","tag-coal","tag-coal-to-diesel","tag-dale-indiana","tag-pollution","tag-spencer-county-in","tag-sw-indiana-citizens-for-quality-of-life","tag-valley-watch"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4612"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4622,"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4612\/revisions\/4622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}