At a public forum held Thursday night at the South Side Library, Terry Huval, director of the public-owned Lafayette Utilities System, told the crowd of about 60 people that the decision had already been made by the council to move forward on a multi-million dollar project to bring the 30 year old Rodemacher 2 coal plant up to federal standards.
“It’s a done deal. We are moving forward on this project,” says Huval. “The council has approved the bonds, and the bonds sold.”
 |
|
| Simon Mahan / Photo by Elizabeth Rose |
He says the total bond issue equals $65 million, which the council got at an interest rate of 2.79 percent.
Huval’s comments Thursday came on the heels of a presentation by Lafayette resident Simon Mahan, a renewable energy manager with the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, who outlined an alternative energy plan during the second in a series of public forums organized by the League of Women Voters of Lafayette and the Sierra Club Acadian Group.
Mahan says that by replacing coal, which currently provides 60 percent of the area’s electricity, Lafayette could save just shy of a billion dollars over the next 20 years.
Mahan’s “clean future scenario” calls for a long-term investment in advanced natural gas power plants, increased energy efficiency, and both wind and solar power.
“If we continue with business as usual, we’ll spend about $3.5 billion over the next 20 years," says Mahan. "If we go with a clean future scenario, we’ll only spend around $2.8 billion.”
Mahan points to Louisiana’s abundance in natural gas reserves, farm land and even sunlight, as ways to replace coal, which currently is purchased and shipped from Wyoming.
“We’re asking for the council to sanction a citizens task force to figure this all out and conduct a financial risk assessment and technological review,” Mayan says.
The residents attending Thursday's forum agree.
"Coal is a foolish decision," says Griff Blakewood, a renewable resources professor at UL.
Sierra Club member Harold Schoeffler says the creation of a citizen committee will be an imperative to changing the thinking of public officials, who seem set on continuing Lafayette's coal dependence.
"Recycling was accomplished because a citizen committee was created to investigate and make a recommendation to the council," says Schoeffler. "Twenty-five years into it and we have a modeling recycling system."
Huval says the decision to bring Rodemacher up to standard is all about cost-factor. He says the price of coal is much stabler than natural gas, and the original $200 million debt owed on Rodemacher has been paid.
Yet, Huval does know the negatives associated with coal, as seen in David Cay Johnston’s new book “The Fine Print: How Big Companies Use ‘Plain English’ To Rob You Blind,” which was released in September. In the fourth chapter, titled “Railroaded,”Huval discusses why coal is a bad deal for Lafayette. Johnston writes:
From Kansas City on south, two railroads, the Kansas City Southern and the Union Pacific, rumble across Arkansas, delivering Wyoming coal to Louisiana. Although both railroads trace the eastern shore of the Red River to Lafayette, the utility’s power plant is twenty miles back upstream on the west side of the river. As it happens, the west bank is Union Pacific’s exclusive province. Well, you might say, why can’t Lafayette negotiate competitive rates from Wyoming to the Lafayette rail yards, then pay Union Pacific a monopoly rate to haul its coal the last twenty miles to the parish’s Rodemacher power plant? Sadly, it doesn’t work that way, and Lafayette pays a monopoly rate for the entire 1,520-mile trip.‘We are a classic captive customer,’ said Terry Huval, who runs the Lafayette Utilities System. ‘On ninety-nine percent of the route we have competitive rail service, so we would like to negotiate for competitive rates on that portion, but we cannot.’
You’re probably wondering what this means to your monthly electric bill. Thanks to Congress, you’re not really allowed to know that. ‘I’d tell you the terms of our contract if I could,’ Huval said. Even though he couldn’t tell me the particulars, he did describe the big picture. According to Huval, Union Pacific’s monopoly pricing costs his community about $6.5 million per year. And the figure keeps rising.
MAY 17 Here's a column from James Gill, this time in the Advocate. Gill, who has jumped ship from the Picayune, writes about the absurdity of dueling polls in this post. The numbers are so wildly different, it is obvious that both sides are "cooking the books," he writes. In particular, he looks at Sen. Mary Landrieu, and how her recent actions in DC have been received by those polled. Gill's acerbic, amusing prose is a welcome addition to a paper so conservative as to be occasionally lacking in personality.
MAY 17 Blogger Tom Aswell continues delivering bombshells about the state education department and Gov. Jindal's education "reform" efforts. In this post, he reports that students in the Shreveport area have been signed up for a charter school without their knowledge or consent. Most interesting to Aswell is how this Texas-based charter (with ties to GOP types) got the personal student information it has, if the students didn't give it.
MAY 17 This post by JR Ball in the Baton Rouge Business Report is an interesting tongue-in-cheek look at recent Baton Rouge economic development efforts. Among the items he examines is the idea that gaining a Costco makes BR a "world-class city." (Really? All you need is a different brand of Sam's? MK!) This effort, and other recent ones, are all built on the taxpayer's back, with tax zones, tax incentives and tax rebates, Ball writes.
MAY 17 Blogger CB Forgotston is critical of the legislature's reliance on a revenue-estimating committee's decision to include projected tax amnesty income in this year's forecast. That's a problem, CB posts, because the deadline for these people to pay their taxes is June 30, 2014. So when do you think these people who haven't paid taxes in years are going to pay their taxes? Surely not before June 30, and that means the money won't be there for this year's budget, he argues.
MAY 17 Here's an interesting blog out of California by a Hollywood writer, attorney and academic named Brian Alan Lane. He blogs about higher ed, and was a whistle-blower in a scandal over false credentials. In this post, he takes aim at LSU's new top dog, King Alexander. It's convoluted and a little confusing, but it sure makes Alexander a lot more interesting than he was yesterday.
MAY 17 Blogger Robert Mann writes about the LSU Board's refusal to allow Dr. Fred Cerise to testify before the legislature about Gov. Jindal's plan to close down all the state's charity hospitals and dump the poor on the private system. It's hard to imagine anyone more qualified than Cerise to testify about that, so why would anyone try to prevent him doing so? Mann thinks it is because the powers that be aren't interested in hearing any truth about the plan.
MAY 17 This post on the Louisiana Sinkhole Bugle, a blog that notes developments in the Bayou Corne and Jefferson Island salt domes, talks about a proposed expansion of the salt dome storage under Lake Peigneur in Iberia Parish. Residents are working against it for several reasons, including two biggies: the sinkhole disaster in Bayou Corne and the continuing, unexplained bubbling on the surface of the Lake.
MAY 17 NOLA police arrested more people Thursday accused of either being involved in the Mother's Day shooting or hiding the suspect afterward, this Gambit story reports. The NOLA police chief said he suspects the whole thing was gang-related and throws out a challenge to the gangs: he's got informants now, he says, and he knows a lot more than the gangs want him to know. The people who live in the neighborhoods terrorized by gangs are ready to talk, he says.
Most Read
in case you missed it
Subscribe to this comment's feed
“We’re "asking for the council to sanction a citizens task force to figure this all out and conduct a financial risk assessment and technological review,” Mayan says.
Therefore, how can he make project cost saving to the degree he has made? His, as well as Schoeffler's, presentation is a gross oversimplification of a horrendously expensive adjustment to the energy distribution system. It is impossible to make claims concerning conversion to or incorporation of any alternative energy proposals. Even once any "proposed" group develops proposed cost estimates, one could very easily double if not triple such estimates for final cost purposes. Of course, just as in the case of cost overruns with respect to nuclear plants, proponents of alternative energy downplay the ultimate cost. They know(and now you know)the taxpayers will be on the "hook" for whatever projects are developed.