Today’s Journal takes a look at the renewable energy bill, which has already passed the Senate.
Here’s the interesting part:
Sixteen environmental groups sent a letter last week to House Speaker Joe Hackney, D-Orange, to protest the bill’s financing provisions.
“Effectively, these provisions accelerate the construction of the very plants that renewable energy and efficiency measures are intended to offset,” the letter says.
The groups also have concerns about the environmental effects of converting animal waste to energy.
Turns out converting animal waste into energy is already an issue in the mountains:
….a proposal to build a poultry-litter plant in a northwest county – Wilkes, Surry or Alexander – faces opposition.
It has the support of farmers, who want an alternative to spreading manure and bedding on fields, but environmentalists say that burning the litter would produce too much air pollution.
Lou Zeller of the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League supports the wind-energy proposal but is fighting the chicken-litter plant. Last week, he asked legislators to remove the poultry-litter provision from the bill.
“We look at things on the issues of public health and the pocketbook issues,” Zeller said. “On both bases, wind power passes muster. With the poultry waste, the more you look into it, the worse it looks.”
