Citizens action founder says coal-fired plants cost lives

Although Meigs County is only two hours from New Concord, local residents might be surprised to hear that they are living so close to an area that has the highest number of adults suffering from asthma and the highest death rate for lung and bronchus cancer in Ohio, according to the most recent data in “Ohio Cancer Facts and Figures 2008.”

Meigs County is home to four coal-fired power plants in an approximate 10-mile radius in Ohio and West Virginia. Community members are actively resisting the threat to create up to five more proposed coal-fired plants in the area.

Leading this fight is Elisa Young, a seventh-generation Appalachian and founder of the community activist group Meigs Citizens Action Now! Young spoke at the college as part of Muskingum’s Environmental Student Activists sponsored Green Week.

“I appreciate any public opportunity to speak, because the only hope Meigs County has for stopping the construction of more coal-fired power plants is to make the communities that would be receiving the electricity aware of our objections to this assault on our health and environment,” said Young. “People need to know that 86 percent of the electricity in Ohio is produced from coal at the expense of my community.”

Jessica Turner, a senior Conservation Science major, heard Young speak and wrote her graduate school applications about how rural communities bear the burden of America’s energy usage.

“We need a cultural shift because right now, big coal has a far greater grasp than the individual has,” said Turner. “We need to get rid of the apathy. [Young] said people don’t care about the effects of coal unless it’s in their backyard. We need to look beyond the simplicity of being able to turn on a light switch and realize where that electricity is coming from, because people are suffering and we just turn a blind eye.”

Young said she became concerned about the environmental effects of the power plants after noticing an abnormally high rate of cancer in her rural community. She said six of her neighbors recently died of cancer. Young herself has had melanoma, a lump removed from her breast and will be starting chemotherapy treatment for a pre-cancerous condition. She said she has no family history of cancer.

“When I go to public hearings about the coal plants, representatives will tell me that these people died because they were smokers, but of the six people I know that have passed away from lung cancer, none of them have been smokers,” said Young. “Once, I asked them, ‘How many Meigs County lives does it take to produce one megawatt of electricity?’ and they didn’t have a response.”

Sophomore Brittany Trager also heard Young speak and said that she now has a greater sense of the injustices behind the coal industry.

“I used to think that clean coal seemed like a viable solution to the energy crisis,” said Trager. “But now I don’t think that clean coal exists. You can change the way you burn it and put the waste someplace else, but it doesn’t matter, because people like Elisa [Young] are still being exploited.”

To learn more about Young and the situation in Meigs County visit, http://www.meigscan.org/.