Monday July 29th… Dear Diary. The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track United States extreme or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😉
Fixing Our Backyard Problems…Case In Point Cobb County Georgia Coal Ash Ponds
As environmentalists working to correct the climate problem we often get fixated on the overall problem, that of rising CO2 levels, whether from far flung sources and countries like China and India, neglecting what is going right underneath our own noses very close to home. This is one reason why I joined Climate Reality because each chapter does what they can to limit local carbon pollution and its associated hazards.
Our new Cobb County, Georgia chapter is focused on getting Georgia Power to make sure that coal ash stored in ponds is disposed of properly, getting the toxic stuff moved away from Plant McDonough. We were fortunate that Plant McDonough in which coal was burned for electricity in my home county of Cobb, Georgia was redesigned to burn cleaner natural gas in 2015, but we want to make sure that coal ash stored near the plant does not leach into soil producing a cancerous biohazard in drinking water. The old coal burning McDonough plant was located in extreme southeast Cobb near the Fulton County border where any underground water naturally flows southward into Atlanta proper. I wrote a prior post on the McDonough plant linked here:
Here is some of what I initially posted back in March of 2019:
Let’s specifically look at the history of the McDonough plant to see if positive changes have taken place since I first saw the thing in operation a couple of decades ago. Upon Googling the plant I initially saw this: Plant McDonough-Atkinson is named for the late John J. “Jack” McDonough – who was Georgia Power’s president from 1957 to 1963 and for Henry M. Atkinson, one of the founders of Georgia Railway and Electric Company. Georgia Power retired its coal-fired units at Plant McDonough-Atkinson in 2011 and added three natural gas combined cycle units.
For more on what is planned to do about stored coal ash, including a crucial public hearing in August, please read this article from the Marietta Daily Journal:
I can’t emphasize enough for all reading this post to get involved in the local community via Climate Reality or some other organization to combat climate change and protect the environment from harmful chemicals that are a by product of producing energy for our civilization. Stay informed. If everyone demanded change in their towns and cities throughout the world the climate crisis could be solved. I know that I will be keeping tabs on Plant McDonogh in the years to come, and yes I will be pushing for the plant to switch yet again from natural gas to solar energy.
Here is more climate and weather news from Monday:
(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article.)
(If you like these posts and my work please contribute via the PayPal widget, which has recently been added to this site. Thanks in advance for any support.)
Guy Walton- “The Climate Guy”