You might find the following description interesting, or even useful. If bills like this one from Georgia start passing elsewhere, we may actually see an end to MTR. It will be a long battle, but I am seeing an end game now. And there may be some useful lobbying ideas in here for our hearings. I like the light bulb trick, let's use it.

JBK

I am sure that the Sierra Club lobbyist in Georgia is an objective, calm, factual, "Nothing But The Truth" kind of guy and the language used below is an accurate representation of the hearing. :-)

...

...

Paula.Carrell@sierraclub.org 2/17/2009 1:25 PM >>>

Subject: Neill's report on hearing on GA HB 276: mountaintop removal coal bill

Feb. 16, Monday, back to the State Capitol. The Energy Subcommittee of

the Rollover for GA Power Committee had a hearing on MMO’s bill to place a 5 year moratorium on new coal plants and a phase out of mountaintop removal coal from GA boilers. The Power Co witness was a droning testimony reader named Burleson, who took about 20 minutes to find all

sorts of things wrong with the bill without ever dealing with any specific facts, only generalities, and the sort of half-truths Power Co planners

use as their lingua franca. Basically, pass this, or anything resembling it, and everyone will move to Alabama or some other paradise where they

can burn any goddamned coals they wish and we will be ruint. This is only a variation on the same shit they said 30 years ago, when they said if

they couldn’t raise rates that “grass would grow in GA’s streets.”

The pro-bill testimony was refreshingly good, and reached the committee in ways that GA Power and that pathetic liar ex-Rep. Dean Alford (D-Conflict of Interest) who was there to spin nothing buy fiction about his proposed Washington Co. coal plant. He even talked about how the pine trees were going to eat the carbon from it. I think it is about time to start circulating the Dean stories from 1991, where he had to quit the legislature because he got caught lobbying for himself.

Johnny Noels was very good, with a handout that the Chair, Jeff May referred to twice with respectful admiration, at the amount of cheap power available from efficiency, and Noels was clever enough to point out the

EXIT sign in the back of the room, said, “It may have a low wattage fluorescent bulb in it, running 24-7, but if they put one of these,”

whipping out an Edison base LED, “They can cut the use to 2% of the incandescent wattage and get the same service, and no maintenance again.”

The Appalachian Voices guys were great, and have a very impressive slide show, that enabled them to totally embarrass the Power co, which said they didn’t pay too much attention to the mining technique that produced their coal; these guys said, “We do,” and proceeded to show amazing maps that they could zoom in on, and showed what a mtn top removal site looks like after they are done (17,000 acres of wasteland) and what one looks like at startup. They also had wonderful stats about costs and production totals, the fact that this is a declining resource with rising costs built in.

Damning stuff. And it got the committee’s attention despite themselves.