Forum Poll

[Tom]

Here is something to think about.  
It's tom's logic :D that if the government is interested in Power plants polluting, then they should be concerned over the amount of pollutants the power plants are putting. out, not the type of pollution equipment they use.

[Sawyerfortyish]

 Tom my dad has a cabin on a lake in Vermont and the water goes to a hydro electric plant as with many of the lakes up there. Thats what I would like to see more of. Even some of the larger streams have small generator plants and they dont back up the water to much. The one I'm talking about only holds back a couple acers of water. I like to see a small pond instead of those nuke plants

[woodmills1]

Read in sundays paper that our power company, PSNH, wants to convert one of the coal plants in portsmouth to wood.  It said that would have the benifit of creating a market for low quality wood waste.  Sounds good right?  What is interesting is that years ago PSNH put together contracts for 4+ mills to burn wood waste to make power.  Seems the price they agreed to pay for the electricity was way too high once the relatively inexpensive canadian hydro entered the scene.  PSNH proceeded to wiggle out of the contracts on 3 of the 4 plants, stranding all of the related companies that set themself up to supply the wood product.  No wonder we pay more for electric than almost any other state.

original deal
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=NEW+hampshire+wood+fired+electric+plants&btnG=Google+Search

deal going south
http://nhpr.org/view_content/2002/

new story
http://www4.fosters.com/News2003/August2003/August_29/News/bu_0829g.asp

[Ron Wenrich]

I believe New Hampshire used to have a 25 Meg wood fired power plant.  It was built in the '80s and sold was sold back to the electrice company about 5 years ago.  It was shut down.  The utility made sure that it was made uneconomical, by using different methods to compute costs and payments.

There used to be several low head power generators here in Pennsylvania.  Each town next to any creek with a little flow had one to serve their citizens.  After WWII, the utilities came in, bought them up, dismantled them and sold them back with a clause that said a dam could never be built for power production.  Instead we got coal plants and TMI.

I wouldn't worry too much about the types of pollution, as long as it would stay where it was generated.  The Northeast suffers from all the pollution spewed into the air in the Midwest.  We've had rain fall in PA with a pH similar to that of lemon juice.  There are lakes in NY that are dead and probably won't come back for centuries, if then.  

At one time, PA was considering sueing Midwest states over air pollution.  The EPA and clean air act were meant to lessen the amounts of pollutants that flowed from one area to another.

It doesn't help that the Northeast voted Democratic and the Midwest voted Republican.  Paybacks are a .... well, you know.   :D

[Tim]

It would seem to me that there would be some limitations to non competition clauses in purchase contracts Ron. At least there generally is in privat sales of companies, usually 5 years.

If the hydro facilities were public, initially, in these towns and the dam sites were purchased public from the utilities, would there not be grounds for a breach of trust suit against the municipality?

Bear in mind that Canada is far more socialist than the US, or for that matter, more than I would care to admit. Oh yeah... I forgot, you don't live in a democracy either... ( I can say that as I've probaly already been labled as a subversive.)

[Norm]

The small town I grew up near had it's own coal fired power back in the 60's. I remember the stack would spew out black smoke. They shut it down in the 70's, we now have nuclear plants and a couple of big coal fired power plants. I've noticed the trend since then is that the air is cleaner. There are coal fired plants to the west of us also, my guess is that the NE has em too. By the way Iowa and most midwest states vote for the dems, Bush didn't carry Iowa. I'm ashamed to say our state voted for Clinton both times.