Huge Turnout 

at Charlotte Cliffside Hearing

Crowd Packs Church

to Voice Opposition to Proposed Duke Coal Plant

October 16, 2007
More than 200 people crowded into the assembly room at the Myers Park Baptist Church, in Charlotte on Tuesday to voice strong opposition to Duke Energy's plan to build a new 800 megawatt coal-burning unit at its Cliffside facility in Rutherford County. The public hearing was one of three to be held in the next eight days in North Carolina, organized by a large coalition of community and environmental organizations after the NC Division of Air Quality denied repeated requests to conduct the hearings. DAQ held only one, minimally publicized hearing on Cliffside in remote Forest City, NC, on September 18 in which few people from the major urban areas of the state were able to attend. Citizen-initiated hearings on Cliffside will also be held this Thursday, Oct. 18 in Asheville, at Asheville-Buncombe Technical College Simpson Auditorium and on Tuesday, October 23, in Raleigh, at the Cameron Village Public Library's large meeting room.

Emotions ran high at the Charlotte hearing as speaker after speaker voiced resentment at the DAQ's apparent lack of cooperation with citizens in providing a venue for public concern on the construction of the massive power plant that would add six million tons of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere annually, as well as thousands of tons of sulfur dioxide, ozone producing nitrogen oxides and hundreds of pounds of mercury.

"Cliffside and the construction of new coal-burning power plants in general has obviously become a hot-button issue," said Avram Friedman, Director of the Canary Coalition, one of the organizing groups. "The turnout and energy of the Charlotte hearing is astounding. It's much more electrifying than anyone anticipated. It's likely this will build momentum going into the Asheville and Raleigh hearings as word gets out through the internet grapevine and the vast grassroots environmental network around the state. This is a grassroots rebellion against state energy policy that relies on old, dirty and dangerous technologies to meet future energy demand. It's a broad-based, mainstream public response. Democrats and Republicans, rich and poor, black and white, it doesn't matter. We all have to breathe clean air to remain healthy and we all want to be responsible toward our children's future. Burning more coal just doesn't meet the criteria of providing for a promising future."

The Asheville hearing at AB TECH will begin at 6 pm on Thursday.
The Raleigh hearing at Cameron Village Library will begin at 5:30 pm next Tuesday.
The entire proceedings are being captured on videotape and DVD copies will be delivered to the DAQ and selected news media outlets.
Written comments will also be submitted to the DAQ prior to the deadline of October 31. 

For more information visit www.canarycoalition.org or call 828-631-3447.