"MY HEART WILL GO ON" celion dion

Song from Titanic? I'll explain; first, read this:

Columbus to pay part of power plant fine
Saturday, June 5, 2010 02:52 AM
By Spencer Hunt

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
People who pay their electricity bills to Columbus or as many as 47 other Ohio cities and villages will soon help American Municipal Power pay an $850,000 fine for air pollution.

The Columbus-based utility, a nonprofit cooperative that resells electricity to about 80 municipal electric systems in Ohio, agreed to pay the fine in May to help settle a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The suit alleged that the Richard H. Gorsuch plant, along the Ohio River near Marietta, has violated the Clean Air Act since at least 1991.

American Municipal Power officials also agreed to close Gorsuch by the end of 2012 and to help fund a $15 million energy-efficiency program in the cities and villages that signed contracts to buy Gorsuch's electricity.

Those same contracts require member municipalities to help pay the fine, said Rick Westerfield, administrator of Columbus' water and power division. The city supplies power to about 14,000 businesses and homes.

"It's our understanding that there are some responsibilities for the city under that agreement," Westerfield said of Columbus' contract, which dates to 1988.

"What the exact payment is, we do not know yet."

One environmental group estimates that Columbus' share might be as high as $67,000.

American Municipal Power spokesman Kent Carson declined to comment on the settlement and the utility's contracts. Officials in Oberlin and Yellow Springs, which also pay for electricity from Gorsuch, said that they, too, expect to pay a portion of the fine.

The Yellow Springs contract is so old, said Village Manager Mark Cundiff, that he couldn't find it.

"We had to ask AMP to send us a copy," Cundiff said. "We just received it yesterday."

In a May 21 memo sent to Oberlin council members, electric director Steve Dupee estimated that the city would have to pay $29,640. The amount was based on the percentage of Gorsuch power the city buys.

"We're the virtual owners of that plant," Dupee said. "We are AMP."

Sandy Buchanan, director of Ohio Citizen Action, an environmental advocacy group, questioned why cities should have to dip into their own funds to pay American Municipal Power's fine.

Documents forwarded by the group list Columbus and 47 other cities as "Gorsuch participants."

"They trusted AMP to run Gorsuch in compliance with environmental law," Buchanan said. "If AMP doesn't, then the cities are stuck with the bill? It doesn't seem to me like a prudent thing for cities to agree to."

Buchanan said Columbus buys 7.9 percent of Gorsuch's power and estimated the city's share of the fine to be about $67,000.

The U.S. EPA suit, which was filed in April 2009, said American Municipal Power and former Gorsuch owner Elkem Metals Inc. should have installed air-pollution filters when the plant was repaired and upgraded between 1982 and 1991.

Any payment Columbus makes likely would come out of a $4 million fund the city keeps as a reserve over the $60 million to $70 million it spends each year on electricity from Gorsuch and other power plants.

"We're watching this very closely," Westerfield said.

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Now don't go jumping off a bridge just yet the city manager informed council that we own one megawatt of the Gorsuch Power Plant and our share of the fine will be $4,200.00 I have verified this with other sources that had it pegged between $4,000 and $4,500 hundred dollars.
Is this just the tip of the iceberg that the S.S. Painesville is about to run into? Up until about a week ago I never knew we had an interest in the Gorsuch Plant. What about this 15 million dollars energy-efficency program along with the cost of permanently closing that plant let alone if they decide to demolish it?
Is this just the tip? Here comes Meigs County AGAS what will be our final exposure to that folly be?
At the last council meeting the city manager explained that since the reporting of Nexgen's interest in "clean" energy other companies had approached the city. She believes the 10 year contract with Nextgen Energy is far better then getting involved with a 20 year contract with another supplier. Really Ms. McMahon a 20 year contract is to long for a clean energy contract? Please explain then why you recommended a 50 year contract on a coal plant with AMP-OHIO to council?