McDonough Steam Generating Plant

Jack McDonough Steam Generating Plant is a coal-fired power station owned and operated by Southern Company near Smyrna, Georgia.

In August, 2009, the Chattanooga Times Free Press reported that Georgia Power is moving ahead with plans to replace the McDonough Steam Generating Plant with a natural gas-fired plant and switch its Mitchell Steam Generating Plant near Albany, Ga., from coal to wood chips.

Plant Data

 * Owner: Georgia Power Company
 * Parent Company: Southern Company
 * Plant Nameplate Capacity: 598 MW (Megawatts)
 * Units and In-Service Dates: 299 MW (1963), 299 MW (1964)
 * Location: 5551 South Cobb Dr., Smyrna, GA 30080
 * GPS Coordinates: 33.822806, -84.475667
 * Coal Consumption:
 * Coal Sources (2009)
 * Leeco 64 (Kentucky)
 * Bledsoe #1 (Kentucky)
 * Alliance Resource Cave Branch (Kentucky)
 * Cloverlick Mine (Kentucky)

Emissions Data

 * 2006 CO2 Emissions: 3,705,401 tons
 * 2006 SO2 Emissions: 28,835 tons
 * 2006 SO2 Emissions per MWh:
 * 2006 NOx Emissions: 4,286 tons
 * 2005 Mercury Emissions: 116 lb.

Death and disease attributable to fine particle pollution from McDonough Plant
In 2010, Abt Associates issued a study commissioned by the Clean Air Task Force, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization, quantifying the deaths and other health effects attributable to fine particle pollution from coal-fired power plants. Fine particle pollution consists of a complex mixture of soot, heavy metals, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides. Among these particles, the most dangerous are those less than 2.5 microns in diameter, which are so tiny that they can evade the lung's natural defenses, enter the bloodstream, and be transported to vital organs. Impacts are especially severe among the elderly, children, and those with respiratory disease. The study found that over 13,000 deaths and tens of thousands of cases of chronic bronchitis, acute bronchitis, asthma, congestive heart failure, acute myocardial infarction, dysrhythmia, ischemic heart disease, chronic lung disease, and pneumonia each year are attributable to fine particle pollution from U.S. coal plant emissions. These deaths and illnesses are major examples of coal's external costs, i.e. uncompensated harms inflicted upon the public at large. Low-income and minority populations are disproportionately impacted as well, due to the tendency of companies to avoid locating power plants upwind of affluent communities. To monetize the health impact of fine particle pollution from each coal plant, Abt assigned a value of $7,300,000 to each 2010 mortality, based on a range of government and private studies. Valuations of illnesses ranged from $52 for an asthma episode to $440,000 for a case of chronic bronchitis.

Table 1: Death and disease attributable to fine particle pollution from McDonough Plant
Source: "Find Your Risk from Power Plant Pollution," Clean Air Task Force interactive table, accessed February 2011

McDonough ranked 84th on list of most polluting power plants in terms of coal waste
In January 2009, Sue Sturgis of the Institute of Southern Studies compiled a list of the 100 most polluting coal plants in the United States in terms of coal combustion waste (CCW) stored in surface impoundments like the one involved in the TVA Kingston Fossil Plant coal ash spill. The data came from the EPA's Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) for 2006, the most recent year available.

McDonough Steam Generating Plant ranked number 84 on the list, with 318,051 pounds of coal combustion waste released to surface impoundments in 2006.

Legislative issues
House Bill 276, proposed by Margaret Oliver (D-Decatur), would put a 5-year moratorium on building new coal plants and eliminate the burning of Appalachian coal mined by mountaintop removal by mid-2016. The Appalachian Mountain Preservation Act would gradually prohibit Georgia coal consumers from using Central Appalachian mountaintop removal beginning in 2011. The bill is backed by environmental groups including Appalachian Voices but received strong opposition from POWER4Georgians, a coalition of 10 electric co-operatives seeking to build a $2 billion 850-megawatt supercritical coal plant in Washington County.

Citizen groups

 * CleanPower4Georgians
 * Fall-line Alliance for Clean Environment
 * Focus the Nation
 * Friends of the Chattahoochee
 * GreenLaw
 * Sierra Club Georgia Chapter
 * Co-op Conversations Georgia
 * Cobb Alliance for Smart Energy

Related SourceWatch Articles

 * Existing U.S. Coal Plants
 * Georgia and coal
 * Southern Company
 * United States and coal
 * Global warming