1. Natural gas is neither a short or long-term panacea or safe fuel for us in our neighborhoods or our future because it is still a fossil fuel that warms the earth and emits numerous dangerous by-products that cause cancer.*
2. Natural gas is an overestimated fuel that may only last for 20 years. The planners need to take into consideration that the financing of the power plant is probably not sound and will likely not outlast the plant’s usefulness; that the deconstruction of the plant if approved must include the cost of dismantling and returning to open space so that a few years from now we are not left with a rusting hulk of a plant in a toxic zone resulting from some billionaire’s polluted field of profit dreams.
3. The fracking process of extraction of natural gas from deep within the earth is becoming more and more dangerous because dangerous and cancer-causing and radioactive chemicals are added to the mix or released into the “natural gas” and will be burned in our neighborhood.
4. The continued acceleration of the fracking process will put downward pressure on the price of natural gas, thus lowering the cost to the applicant in the short run while further increasing the likelihood that the plant will be run full time to maximize its profitability.
5. The combination of lower cost of fuel and shortness of availability may insure that the plant will run full time to extract values as soon as possible.**
*For a detailed look at the applicant CoGentrix’ estimates of Quail Brush Generation Project emissions, related air quality standards, and health effects of the pollutants, download these pdfs, save to your desktop, and review:
1) Section 4.7
2) Appendix F
**Information for this post was inspired by Jeff Goodell’s Rolling Stone article “The Big Fracking Bubble”
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