Fresh Loaf

The Rome News-Tribune is reporting that 30 years after Georgia Power’s Plant Bowen started belching out pollutants, one of the nation’s biggest carbon dioxide emitters has installed its first of four scrubbers at the facility.

The device — known as a flue gas desulphurization system — is estimated to remove 95 percent of sulfur dioxide from emissions. Its lone waste product — gypsum — will be sold to an Alabama rock wall company.

The article says that Georgia Power plans on installing 21 scrubbers on six of its coal-fired power plants. Each one will take three years to construct.

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Statistics released yesterday show that Georgia is home to the nation’s dirtiest power plant, Monroe County’s Plant Scherer. We’ve also got No. 3, Plant Bowen in Bartow County.

The nation’s second-dirtiest power plant is right next door, in Alabama. And all three are operated by Southern Co.

According to one estimate, the nation’s 50 dirtiest power plants account for only 14 percent of our electricity-generating facilities, yet are responsible for 40 percent of the nation’s power-plant pollution.

Perhaps I have Southern Co.’s political influence to thank for my persistent summer cough. Those greenhouse gases are far more treacherous in the warmer months, you know.

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