Caving in - Kentucky - Mammoth Cave National Park - Brief Article

Sierra, March-April, 2003

Mammoth Cave National Park includes the longest cave known on Earth. But Kentuckyians are just as proud of its surface activities, which include backpacking and hiking on 70 miles of rugged trails and angling and canoeing on more than 30 miles of the Green and Nolin Rivers. So when the Kentucky Division for Air Quality approved construction of a coal-fired power plant just 50 miles west of the park, the Cumberland Chapter and local conservation groups immediately appealed the decision. Mammoth Cave already has the worst average visibility of all national parks, and Peabody Energy's 1,500-megawatt coal-fired plant would release 22 million pounds of sulfur dioxide into Kentucky skies every year.

But the Interior Department signed Off on the state's project, saying that the plant can initially operate at high emissions levels, with the company promising to lower them after two years. Environmentalism suspect that the cozy compromise is related to the fact that Peabody is a major Republican contributor, and its chair, Irl Engelhardt, was an energy adviser to the Bush-Cheney transition team. Club activists want Kentucky to require Peabody to use "best available" pollution-control technology as mandated by the Clean Air Act--and they'll work on securing best available decision-makers in the next election.

* CONTACT US Spotlight Sierra Club activism in your area by writing to Reed McManus at Sierra, 85 Second St., 2nd Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105-3441; e-mail reed.mcmanus@sierraclub.org; fax (415) 977-5794.