Coal in Washington State, not a chance!!! Recently Washington State University blew a perfect opportunity to become a cutting edge developer of coal technology when it abandoned its emission control equipped coal fired power plant in favor of the much more expensive natural gas/diesel contraption that is currenly burning a percentage of DIESEL (as it has become, according to a WSU spokesman, cheaper to burn diesel over Canadian natural gas). What better opportunity to develope clean coal burning technology and then to test those systems on a working power plant rather than a computer simulation. But no, Washington lawmakers saw fit to not only fund the construction of a new power plant, add two boilers to the old one, and then mandate that once they lit the fires of natural gas, make it illegal to ever go back to burning coal at ANY CAMPUS IN WASHINGTON STATE. Tracks have been ripped out and some of the land that supported those tracks sold off to build taxpayer supported parks and parking lots. Those ripped out tracks also mean that WSU will forever be limited to trucking its scrap and waste materials as it now has no location of its own to load those materials for fuel efficient, low carbon footprint transport! Washington department of ecology supported all steps of this process and, if you recall, supported the ballot measure that limits the use of coal in the production of electricity for Washington residents. Coal for energy production in
Washington State, largely prohibited by law. Very nice thought, but will require much legal wrangling at the state level to pull off (because it's very unlikely the political climate in Olympia is going to change any time soon).