"the People's Paths!" Cherokee News Path - Proposed Coal-Fired Plant Shelved

SALLISAW, Oklahoma – When a group of Cherokee Nation citizens learned that Tenaska Inc. was considering purchasing land near the Sallisaw landfill, they banned together and lobbied for the second time against a proposed coal-fired power plant in Sequoyah County. Now group leaders said they are happy to hear that the company has backed out of the deal.

“Personally, I am elated that Tenaska will not be coming to Sallisaw,” said CN and Sallisaw citizen Mary Adair. Adair is also a member of the Sequoyah County Clean Air Coalition, which opposed Tenaska building a coal-fired plant.

Adair said her opposition came out of concern for her children and grandchildren.

“I want the coming generations to live in a clean environment,” she said. “I feel coal-fired power plants are very harmful, and there are other ways of producing energy that are less polluting.”

She said the SCCAC formed several years ago when another company wanted to build a coal power plant in the McKey community, also located near Sallisaw. That plant was never built thanks to the work of the SCCAC. Adair also said the coalition influenced Tenaska’s decision to not build in the county.

“I do believe the SCCAC did influence the decision by Tenaska not to locate here, however there may be no way to prove that.”

Other coalition members said they were also excited about the news of Tenaska’s pullout, but would remain vigilant against new power developments they think would be harmful to human health and the environment.

“Fantastic,” is how SCCAC member and local attorney Jeff Edwards said about the news that the plant would not be built. “I’m very happy about that, but of course, we’ll still keep our efforts active.”

However, Edwards said he was not surprised because many companies using pulverized coal are getting out because of high expenses. In a June 29 Sequoyah County Times newspaper article, Bill Braudt, Tenaska general manager for business development, cited rising costs as the reason for deciding not to press forward with the deal.

“A coal-fired plant is mostly steel and mostly hand-built, meaning they buy the steel and put the plant together … commodity prices of copper and steel is the biggest chunk of the cost,” Braudt stated. “The Sallisaw area remains a good place, and we are very encouraged by the people. We’re not giving up totally on that concept.”

Edwards said he believes other power companies are looking into building in the area and reaffirmed the group’s commitment to oppose such industry. “Any pulverized coal plants, we’re going to be in opposition to,” he said.

“I think we’ve really got a lot of people’s attention in the community,” SCCAC President Steve Dobbs said, adding that the coalition has a lot of community support. “If any more are proposed in the future, we’ll object.”

Health issues motivated John Weddle, a CN citizen and an emergency room doctor at Sparks Regional Medical Center in nearby Fort Smith, Ark., to become involved in the fight against the plant. Weddle said small particles get deep into lung tissue leading to chronic lung disease, asthma, breathing problems and heart disease.

But now that Tenaska has dropped its plans in Sequoyah County, members said the SCCAC’s efforts are aimed at strengthening Oklahoma’s mercury emissions rule, which came into focus after a recent report by the Mercury Deposition Network citing levels twice the national average in rainwater near Stilwell, about 30 miles northeast of Sallisaw in Adair County.

According to a March 2005 Discover Magazine article, “Mercury is unimaginably toxic and dangerous. A single drop on a human hand can be irreversibly fatal. A single drop in a large lake can make all the fish in it unsafe to eat. Mercury is also a by-product of many industrial processes. In the United States, coal-fired power plants alone pump about 50 tons of it into the air each year. That mercury rains out of the sky into oceans, lakes, rivers and streams, where it becomes concentrated in the flesh of fish, shellfish, seals and whales.”