The Future of FPP

To the Editor:

The Fayette County Commissioners Court is to be commended for having the political courage and the common sense wisdom to approve the solar farm tax abatement request which will generate more tax revenue for decades to come than the special valuations granted agricultural and wildlife preserve lands. In that same vein, now is the time, for the good of the people and the land of Fayette County, for our County Officials to demand and ensure that the LCRA commits now to implement in the near future a FPP coal plant exit strategy where Fayette County will not be left with its aquifers being poisoned by FPP’s leaking coal ash pits and the resulting loss of land values that would seriously impact both county and school district tax revenues.

That LCRA exit strategy should include fair and equitable early retirement plans for laid off older workers equivalent to the wages and retirement benefits they would have received for the balance of their work life at FPP. It should also include the training of younger LCRA workers for higher paying green energy jobs. The County needs to promote the development of more solar farms in Fayette County as a local source of such employment through future tax abatement grants. Those grants, however, need to be conditioned upon offering such solar farm employment to any laid off FPP workers who reside in Fayette County.

That LCRA exit strategy should also include adequate funding to timely contain and clean up FPP’s leaking coal ash pits (they all eventually leak whether lined or unlined) focusing first on the area where the TCEQ has issued warning letters to private well owners of the contamination of their water wells with heavy metals typically linked to coal ash waste as well as the likely contamination of the Colorado River by the LCRA as evidenced by their TCEQ application to use coal ash pit water for dust control. Keeping the Colorado River clean and shutting down FPP would also free up the precious water it wastes for the use of downstream farmers and to supply Austin with drinking water instead of the LCRA exploiting the law of the biggest pump to drain our rural aquifers to sell water for profit to big cities. Will the LCRA now exploit Trump’s recent actions to allow even greater pollution of our Colorado River and aquifers with toxic substances? As the Texas Tribune reported in the Record last year, FPP’s own monitor wells show unsafe levels of a wide array heavy metals associated with their coal ash waste pits that cause cancer and other life threatening health conditions but FPP does not appear to have a containment and clean-up plan and time line in place or funding for it. As part of its reparations to the people of Fayette County, the LCRA should also pay reparations to our school districts by conveying all of its unused thousands of acres that have been laying fallow and not generating property tax revenues since the 1970s to our school districts who, in turn, could sell such land to the young people of Fayette employed in our County’s new green energy economy to raise their families instead of being forced to move to the big city. LCRA reparations should also be made to the farmers and ranchers of thousands of acres of land in Fayette County where their crops and pecan orchards along the Colorado River were diminished or destroyed by FPP’s decades of acid rain and by FPP’s contribution to record drought and heat caused by global warming.

Shutting down FPP would have an extremely positive economic multiplier effect for Texas by keeping the millions of Texas dollars that FPP sends to out of state coal companies every year in Texas (reportedly $200 million per year) not to mention the added benefit to local city utilities and electric cooperatives who would be assured of decades of stable electricity supply costs from the clean energy systems that coal fired power plants are unable to provide due to the increasing cost of deeper mining of coal, transporting that coal and the increasing number of coal mining bankruptcies. In fact our state lawmakers need to sunset all coal fired power plants in Texas to increase that resulting economic multiplier effect of keeping billions of Texas dollars in Texas instead of wasting it on out of state coal companies every year and to enable Texas to grow its clean energy economy with its abundant resources of sun, wind, and, to complement wind and solar and to fuel our trucks and trains, its bountiful natural gas, to bring wide spread prosperity to the State of Texas as a major exporter of its excess clean energy to the rest of the nation and to help save the very life of mankind on our planet from man-made global warming in the process.

A recent writer to the Fayette County Record was apparently unaware of the amount of toxic air emissions emitted every day from FPP’s stacks despite its relatively recent installation of “scrubbers” which only serve to convert its air pollutants to eventual water pollutants. That FPP investment in “scrubbers” came only after being sued by the Environmental Integrity Project’s attorneys and despite assurances by the LCRA at Fayette County town hall meetings before permits were issued in the 1970s that it would always use the best available air pollution control technology. In its annual report for 2018, FPP emitted tons of dangerous toxic substances from its stacks despite those “scrubbers” including 7,158 tons of nitrogen oxides and 1,345 tons of sulfur dioxide that causes respiratory illnesses and kills trees and added almost 60,000 tons of ozone per day – an air pollutant that is linked to severe respiratory illnesses and lethal heart attacks. However, the LCRA does not report the volume of FPP’s “ultrafines” emissions but it did report that, in 2018 long after the its use of “scrubbers”, FPP emitted more than 641 tons of its “fine” particulates which often contain these “ultrafines” that enter the lungs and the brain and other vital organs to prematurely destroy the human body and cause the early onset of dementia and resulting premature death. Now is the time for our County Judge and Commissioners to exercise even greater political courage and common sense by ensuring that the LCRA immediately shut down and contain and clean up its Fayette Power Project and pay reparations for the sake of the lives and livelihood and land and quality of life of the people of Fayette County. Now is the time for the LCRA, as part of its reparations to the people of Fayette County, to replace its dirty coal fired power plant with solar farms in Fayette County and the jobs that come with it and to make the investments needed for solar and wind turbine manufacturing facilities in Fayette County and the good paying clean energy jobs that come with it for the genuine economic development of Fayette County that will last for generations to come.

John W. Mikus

Fayetteville