This article was originally published by the Georgia Recorder

A push to expand community solar in Georgia is running into opposition from the state’s largest electric utility, which has been under pressure in recent years to increase rooftop solar.

Proposals filed in both chambers have sparked interest at the committee level, with those talks set to continue this week. But a key deadline for legislation to pass out of at least one chamber is quickly approaching. 

“Let’s show the rest of the world why Georgia is still the No. 1 place to do business, and we simply can’t do that without more affordable energy,” one of the sponsors, Dallas Republican Sen. Jason Anavitarte, said to his colleagues.

A similar House version is getting attention, too, and is back up for discussion this week.

The House bill’s sponsor, Concord Republican Rep. Beth Camp, said large-scale solar operations are not appealing in her district, but small-scale projects like what is envisioned under the bill are.

“There are people that want to do this,” she said.  

The proposals would allow developers to participate in a community solar program under the state Public Service Commission and let them build small solar arrays on Georgia Power’s turf. Utility customers would be able to subscribe for a portion of the generation output and receive a credit on their electricity bill.

Proponents argue the program would drive down rates overall at a time when the cost of being a Georgia Power customer is on the rise while boosting clean energy access to more Georgians.

“Real community solar is an essential part of the solar-for-all puzzle in Georgia,” said Jennette Gayer, who is state director for advocacy group Environment Georgia. “So many people in Georgia miss out on solar’s benefits because they are renters or their roof is too shady.”

The Environment Georgia Research and Policy Center released a report last week that says Georgia now produces enough energy from small- and medium- sized rooftop scale solar arrays to power about 36,000 homes. But the state is running in the middle of the pack when it comes to growth of small-scale solar over the last decade.

Georgia Power has a popular “net metering” rooftop solar program that is limited to 5,000 households.

Supporters of the so-called “homegrown solar act” also cite Georgia Power’s disclosure last year that the utility expects an energy shortfall as the state continues to roll out economic development projects. The utility has proposed generating much of the power needed through fossil fuel sources.

“We’re trying to help with the energy crisis, candidly,” said Steve Butler, a spokesman for the Georgia Solar Energy Industries Association. “This is something our state could use right now and as quick as possible, but we understand that there’s going to be traditional things that we’re kind of infringing upon. And that’s really the problem. This has worked extremely well all over the country. It’s really tradition that we’re fighting here today.”

But representatives from Georgia Power countered that the proposal would shift costs to other users.

“This is a solution in search of a problem. Our renewable growth is the envy of the United States,” said Wilson Mallard, director of renewable development at Georgia Power. Mallard said the utility is “adamantly opposed to this bill.”

A representative of the Public Service Commission also says the regulatory body also has concerns and says the program is likely to cause confusion among ratepayers.

“When first discussed this bill only included nonprofits, churches and government entities, but as written it potentially includes almost 2.8 million Georgia Power customers,” said Reece McAlister, the commission’s executive director.

But Bob Sherrier, staff attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, said there would be safeguards in place to prevent costs from shifting. The Public Service Commission, which regulates Georgia Power, would set the bill credit amount for customers, as it regularly does in rate cases.

“If Georgia Power can show with evidence in a hearing in front of the commission that there is some shifting of costs between customer classes, then this permits them to impose fees for that actual cost,” Sherrier said. 

Crossover Day, when a bill must clear at least one chamber to have a smooth path to the governor’s desk, is Feb. 29. 

Republican-backed community solar bills face pushback from Georgia utility is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

This article was originally published by Georgia Recorder.

Sometime next year, Pam Wolff hopes to stop lugging heavy five-gallon jugs of clean water into her home every week so she can cook meals, brew her coffee and her grandkids can brush their teeth.

And she is looking forward to taking a shower without worrying over what’s in the polluted well water raining down on her.

Wolff says next year is probably as soon as she can expect to connect her home to a new Monroe County water line being rolled out on the county dime to give residents living in the more than 850 homes near Plant Scherer the choice of clean water. About 300 homes have been connected so far.

But Wolff says the $20 million county water line won’t be enough to quiet her. She said she remains concerned about Georgia Power’s plans to leave about 16 million tons of toxic coal ash in an unlined pit, where it sits in as much as 25 feet of groundwater.

“I’m sure there will be some people who will get complacent with it. ‘Oh well, I’m good now’ kind of thing,” she said. “The ones who have been so long-term medically and financially hurt by it will not be backing off. We’ll be fighting it to the end.”

Wolff was among the dozens of Juliette residents who showed up at the state Capitol last winter — before the COVID-19 pandemic upended life — to pressure lawmakers to require the state’s largest electric utility to excavate all its coal ash waste and move it to lined landfills.

Republican lawmakers have resisted those calls. And this year, a GOP measure requiring utilities to monitor the groundwater near coal ash ponds for 50 years after closure — as opposed to 30 years — cleared the House before stalling in the Senate. The bill remains alive for next year.

Wolff says she is baffled by Georgia Power’s decision to move coal ash to lined landfills at some locations, like Plant Branch in Milledgeville, but not all.

“I get that it is more cost involved and all that but when you’re talking about people’s lives and having viable water, money shouldn’t be a thing – especially for a power company that has massive forces behind them,” she said.

The state’s first close-in-place permit gets a public airing

Coal ash is the toxic waste left behind after decades of burning coal to generate electricity at power plants. And the national reckoning over what to do with this waste is entering a new chapter as states begin to issue permits to utility companies for specific sites.

Here in Georgia, the state Environmental Protection Division has issued the first proposed permit allowing Georgia Power to press forward with plans to leave more than 1 million tons of coal ash in an unlined pit at Floyd County’s Plant Hammond near the Coosa River.

The state is seeking the public’s input now. A virtual hearing is set for 6 p.m. Tuesday, and written comments can also be submitted. More details on the proposed permit and how to weigh in can be found here.

This first permit in northwest Georgia will kick off a series of permitting decisions centered on four other plants: Scherer in Juliette, McDonough in Smyrna, Wansley in Heard County and Yates in Newman.

Georgia Power plans to excavate and move 19 ash ponds and cap-in-place 10 others in unlined pits that have been drained of water.

But here’s where things become complicated: At all five plants where the utility plans to seal-in-place, the toxic coal ash is sitting in groundwater.

The bottom of the coal ash sits in as little as a foot of groundwater to more than 50 feet of groundwater at the five plants, although these numbers are estimates, said Kevin Chambers, EPD spokesman. The coal ash plunging the deepest into groundwater is at Plant Wansley just south of Carrollton.

At Hammond, the work to close the coal ash in place wrapped up three years ago. Because the work is already done, Chris Bowers, a senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, called the permitting for Hammond “a paperwork exercise.”

“What they’re proposing to do is let Georgia Power Company, essentially, self regulate,” he said. “Does this groundwater belong to the state of Georgia and its citizens? Or is this natural resource just basically to be occupied indefinitely as a waste pit.”

Chambers said Georgia Power was operating under federal and state requirements to close the ponds when it capped-in-place Hammond’s site in 2018. He said the division still has the authority to require Georgia Power to relocate the coal ash. But for now, the state is poised to sign off on the utility’s close-in-place plans.

“This permit will ensure that the pond was properly closed and is monitored and maintained for 30 years,” Chambers said.

Chambers said there will be a “robust groundwater monitoring system to detect if groundwater is affected by the ash remaining in place” at Hammond. The cover system, he added, is meant to stop rainwater from pouring onto the coal ash.

Georgia Power has long argued there’s no evidence their coal ash ponds have endangered public health or the state’s drinking water. But when asked if coal ash is submerged in the groundwater, a spokesman did not directly address the question.

“Our closure plans fully comply with the federal Coal Combustion Residuals (CCR) rule, as well as the more stringent requirements of Georgia’s state CCR rule,” Georgia Power spokesman John Kraft said in a statement Friday.

Kraft said more than 600 monitoring wells have been installed at Georgia Power’s facilities to monitor groundwater quality and the utility has hired third-party professionals to gather samples. The results are posted on the utility’s website and reported to the state. A plant-based remediation technology for groundwater will also be used at Hammond, Kraft said.

“Regardless of the method used, closure by removal or closure in place, we’re going to be sure that our closure plans are protective of the environment and the communities we serve,” Kraft said.

‘Let’s do it right the first time’

But environmentalists are sounding the alarm over the Hammond permit, which they argue will set a troubling precedent for the permits coming up soon for other sites in the state — including two much larger ponds holding 16 million tons of coal ash each.

And as one of the first states to implement its own coal ash permitting process, the decisions made in Georgia could have a ripple effect across the region, says Jesse Demonbreun-Chapman, executive director of the Coosa River Basin Initiative.

“The spirit of (federal) law is for the coal ash to be stored dry,” Demonbreun-Chapman said. “The whole point of this law was to end coal ash ponds because coal ash and water are a very dangerous combination.

“And capping a coal ash pond in place, where we know that the toe of the coal ash pond sits lower than the average water table height, is not dry storage of coal ash,” he added. “What they’re signing us up for is decades of slow pollution release into the groundwater and into the Coosa River.”

Demonbreun-Chapman pointed to a 2018 report from Earthjustice and the Environmental Integrity Project that reviewed data publicly reported by utilities and found several pollutants — such as arsenic, boron and cobalt — exceeding safe levels in the groundwater at Hammond. Georgia Power argues the groundwater testing around the pond meets federal drinking water standards.

Unlike Plant Sherer, there are not a lot of homes near Plant Hammond in northwest Georgia. But the Coosa River flows downstream into Alabama’s Weiss Lake, a popular fishing spot for crappie. There’s also a risk of sinkholes, said Demonbreun-Chapman.

Environmentalists argue that, if the close-in-place permits are approved, the utility will have to come back years from now and address the slow release of coal ash contaminants into the groundwater, and that ratepayers will have to pay twice for the cleanup.

Already, Georgia Power has been approved by the state to collect $525 million from ratepayers to pay for its coal ash site closure plans. The total costs could be as much as $8.1 billion, the utility has reported to state regulators.

“Let’s do it right the first time and that way we can minimize the absolute number of costs overall to not only the ratepayers in Georgia, but then also protect their health and environment as well,” said Neil Sardana, the Georgia organizing representative for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign.

Some environmentalists have questioned whether Georgia Power’s plans even amount to a cleanup of coal ash.

“There’s no point of doing any of this if you’re going to leave that waste in the aquifer,” said Fletcher Sams, executive director of the Altamaha Riverkeeper, which has advocated for the coal ash at Plant Scherer to be relocated to a lined landfill.

“The whole point in cleaning it up and closing these ponds is that coal ash and water don’t mix and you need to store it permanently in a place where that’s not happening to protect human health,” he said. “In the state of Georgia, that means nothing. What it means is we’ll spend $7, $8 billion so that we can say that we are in compliance but actually not do anything to help the environment or the people living on our fence lines.”

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a network of news outlets supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com. Follow Georgia Recorder on Facebook and Twitter.

State regulators poised to set Georgia Power’s toxic coal ash storage legacy is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.