Groups Demand DAQ Stop Construction at Cliffside

Community activists lead demonstration at

DENR office in Swannanoa

Left, Jill D. Rios, of Interfaith Power & Light (a program of the NC Council of Churches) hands a letter from nine organizations to Brandon Davey, Regional Supervisor of DAQ. The letter outlines the demand for DAQ to deny permission for Duke Energy to continue construction on its new coal-burning power plant at Cliffside, North Carolina. Right, demonstrators line up to oppose Cliffside.

October 15, 2008

On Wednesday, a strong message for NC Division of Air Quality (DAQ) Director Keith Overcash was delivered in dramatic fashion. A large group of influential individuals and organizations delivered a letter, held a press conference and led a demonstration at DENR headquarters, in Swannanoa, demanding the withdrawal of Duke Energy's construction permit for its new 800 megawatt Cliffside coal-burning power plant in Rutherford County , fifty miles southeast of Asheville . 

Unit 6 at Cliffside would be the largest coal-burning power plant ever built in North Carolina . More than forty similar plants have been cancelled around the nation in the past two years as awareness and concerns grow over climate change, enormous water usage, mercury contamination and other toxic air pollutants resulting from the burning of coal to produce electricity.

"In response to the expansion at the Cliffside coal plant in Rutherford County, we must ask ourselves-what does our faith require of us? Grounded in our deepest justice principles, people of faith in North Carolina must respond with resistance to a project that compromises the health of the public and God's good creation," says Jill D. Rios, Director of North Carolina Interfaith Power & Light, a program of the North Carolina Council of Churches. "The state's religious communities must use their moral authority to influence DAQ's legal authority by demanding public hearings throughout the state as they relate to this project, and requesting that DAQ ulimately deny Duke Energy's request for a Title V permit for expansion at Cliffside."

June Blotnick, of Charlotte-based Carolinas Clean Air Coalition, and Richard Fireman of Physicians for Social Responsibility also addressed the crowd. At the end of the press conference the letter, co-signed by nine major community organizations, was presented to Brendan Davey, a DAQ engineer in the office, who will relay it to Overcash in Raleigh . The letter to DAQ can be viewed at www.stopcliffside.org

Avram Friedman, the Director of the Canary Coalition and one of the organizers of the event said, "The Division of Air Quality has to decide whether it is working to safeguard public health and the environment for the people of North Carolina or it is just a rubber stamp for the industry it's supposed to be regulating. All legal, economic and moral reasoning leads to the conclusion that Cliffside should never be built.  It's long past due for this agency to step forward and do the right thing."

Two bicycle brigades from downtown Asheville and Warren Wilson College merged at the DENR building to join the demonstration against Cliffside. 

There was a simultaneous demonstration and press conference at the DENR office in Raleigh organized by community groups in the Eastern part of the state as part of the growing movement to Stop Cliffside in North Carolina and the nationwide movement to phase out coal in favor of clean, safe renewable technologies like wind, solar, geothermal, wave and tidal energy.

These demonstrations came a day prior to a judicial hearing to be heard in Asheville before the Western North Carolina District Federal Court and Judge Lacy Thornburg, in which the Southern Environmental Law Center has filed for an injunction to stop construction at Cliffside because the Title V Air Quality Permit does not meet federal mercury "MACT" (maximum achievable control technology) standards.

Abigail Singer, Asheville Rising Tide, 828-280-3462

Avram Friedman, Canary Coalition, 828-631-3447

June Blotnick, Carolinas Clean Air Coalition, 704-342-9161

Elaine Lite, Mountain Voices Alliance , 828-255-8537

Jill Rios, NC Interfaith Power & Light, A program of the NC Council of Churches, 828-252-1794

Jim Warren, NC Waste Awareness and Reduction Network, 919-416-5077

Mary Olson, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, 828-675-1792

Russ Anderson, Southern Energy Network, 229-269-1986