Developer Pushing Coal-Fired Plant Next To Kenai Fjords NP - ADN

Seward is weighing a proposal by Anchorage developer Marc Marlow to build a coal-fired power plant in the coastal tourist town, which hosts cruise ships and borders glacier-studded Kenai Fjords National Park. Marlow, who is redeveloping the 1950s-era MacKay Building in Anchorage, is asking the city to buy the power. He also wants to lease 5 acres from the Alaska Railroad Corp. on which he would build a 20-megawatt plant, the developer said. "We're going to build the cleanest coal-fired plant to date in Alaska," Marlow said Wednesday.

Reaction in the town of roughly 2,600 people is apparently mixed. Seward currently gets its power from Chugach Electric Association, an Anchorage utility, but avalanches have taken out the system at times, residents say. To address that problem, city council members have discussed pursuing such alternative-energy projects as hydropower and tidal action. The council also recently formed a committee to negotiate with Marlow.

But the coal-fired power plant proposal has alarmed some in Seward who fear the plant would blacken the skies and generate acid rain, a byproduct of coal combustion that can be deadly to fish, plants and wildlife. "The public is not behind it," said Russ Maddox, board member of Resurrection Bay Conservation Alliance. Maddox's group printed cards for the public to sign and send to city officials expressing their opposition. Some 150 have been returned so far, Maddox said.

Neither the mayor nor the city manager of Seward could be reached Wednesday.

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http://www.adn.com/front/story/7887044p-7780624c.html

Just what they need for tourism, smokestacks and soot. I remember PGH> in 1950 and believe me we don't want to go back to that. If we must use coal, how about the coal to methane conversion plants which are virtually pollution free????