Congressional leaders: Capitol Power Plant should stop burning coal

[babylonsister]

Congressional leaders: Capitol Power Plant should stop burning coal

By Renee Schoof | McClatchy Newspapers



WASHINGTON — Four days before a planned civil disobedience action at a coal-fired power plant near the U.S. Capitol, the leaders of the House of Representatives and the Senate asked Thursday for the plant to replace all its coal with natural gas.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., the Senate majority leader, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., sent a letter to Stephen Ayers, the acting architect of the Capitol, who's in charge of maintaining the Capitol complex, telling him to reduce the amount of coal burned at the plant and to prepare for converting it to burn only natural gas by the end of the year.

The power plant, three blocks south of the Capitol, has been running every day since it went into service in 1910. It provides heating and cooling for the Capitol, the Library of Congress and about 20 other federal buildings on Capitol Hill, using both coal and natural gas.

The plant is the No. 1 source of air pollution and carbon pollution in the nation's capital, the letter said.

For environmental activists it's something more, however — a symbol of the nation's reliance on coal, the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel. Scientists have identified heat-trapping carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels as the primary reason for the increase in Earth's average temperature in recent decades.

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http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/62919.html

[bananas]

1. The protest worked!

[babylonsister]

2. Sounds like it. Either that, or they're waking up! nt

[babylonsister]

3. This is good news. Or not. Wrong forum? nt