Being without electricity for a few hours got me to thinking about a potential environmental disaster. It seems that Kemper County Mississippi sits atop a vast supply of lignite, a poor grade of coal. A power company wants to build a multi- million dollar facility to dig up the coal, and burn the coal as fuel for an electric plant.

Bad idea. The by-products of using lignite are pretty awful. The company says it can capture some of the ash from the burning, but there will be acidic pools of waste water and other nasty by-products. I am against the project--not that my opinion means zilch.

It has been suggested that there is a lot of natural gas around that could be used instead, but no, the construction of this plant will go forward I'm sure. The use of lignite is gonna be a lot messier and more polluting than anyone thinks, and although we cannot do without electricity, using lignite is scraping the bottom of the resource barrel.

susil