Update on the gas plant

I should have been posting about this all along, but have really busy trying to organize opposition in the community.

Last night was the 2nd reading of the FILOT (fee in lieu of taxes) to be awarded to the "company." It passed 4-3 to go on to a 3rd reading an public hearing.

Some of us spoke last night in the public comments. I had prepared a 5-minute comment, but got pared down to 3 min 30 seconds as there were more than 6 speakers. 

You can watch the actual meeting at the Kershaw County Council website. But below is basically what I had planned to say, but had to edit due to the time constraint.

****

Good Evening.

My name is Jim Curley. My family and I stay on Timrod Road about 2 miles outside of town. I am an Adjunct Instructor in Physics and Astronomy at Winthrop U and York Technical College. We moved here from the city for peace, quiet, and rural living.  

I am here today to talk about a plan to rupture the peace, quiet and rural living; which is the Natural Gas-fired power plant proposed and to be located on about 800 acres between Boise Cascade Road and Timrod Road. While I don’t live in the closest house to the proposed plant, I am in the top 3 or maybe 4.

About 2 weeks ago I received a letter from Beaufort Rosemary inviting us to a meeting about a power project in our area. I emailed Beaufort Rosemary and received the information that it would be a Natural Gas fired power plant between Boise Cascade and Timrod Road.

Going to the meeting, Beaufort Rosemary gave us an overview and offered us financial incentives if we signed a letter of support for the project and came to meetings to support the project.

While many questions were asked about safety and logistics, Beaufort Rosemary answers were not convincing. Research with the EPA and numerous other energy and power sources reveal that there are health, environmental, and economic issues with these types of power plants.

I am most concerned with health issues, but I would be lying if I wasn’t concerned about the decline in my property value if this plant happens or the decline in the quality of life for folks in our area. There is another issue. The footprint of this plant is proposed to be about 100 acres. What is planned for the future on the remaining 700 or so acres? Data Center? Solar Panel Farm? Another power plant? I can’t believe it is just a buffer; for now yes. But in 5-10 years?

But I am here primarily to talk about the health risks this poses for the immediate and wider community.

For example, a study (2025) by the Dominici Lab at Harvard University’s School of Public Health issued a report on the newly proposed power plant in Colleton County at Canadys. In part it says, (I quote):

“Emissions modeling revealed that more than two million people would be impacted by additional particulate matter exposure from the gas plant, with the plant emitting annually at least 164.3 tons of particulate matter (also called PM_2.5) – a harmful form of air pollution unsafe at any level of exposure. Colleton and surrounding counties would face the brunt of the air pollution, but it would travel as far as Georgia.

This pollution could result in up to $28M in healthcare related costs annually due to increased disease burden on impacted communities, increasing to $36M annually by 2040 with inflation. “

This plant will be bigger than Bethune’s, but the point is the same. This a brand-new plant with the latest technology in clean emissions, presumably, and yet will still cause many people many health problems.

From the EPA:

“Natural gas fired power plants can have significant effects on the health of members of the close community. Nitrogen Oxides, Sulfur dioxide, and particulate matter (microscopic solid or liquid particles suspended in the air, which can be harmful to health when inhaled) all contribute to respiratory problems (exacerbating asthma and other conditions) and Heart Disease. “

This plant in Bethune will destroy our way of life in the Timrod/Boise Cascade Road community, if not our very lives.

I understand there are financial benefits for the county if this plant goes in. But if you weigh that against the health and very lives of some (even if a minority) of the Kershaw County residents, there is no bargain; there is no scale which balances the results.

Thus I strongly oppose the construction of this plant and any encouragement and financial incentives given to the Beaufort Rosemary in this process.

Finally, I ask how much money the County will lose in tax revenue is they award this FILOT?

***

 Oremus pro invicem!

Several years ago we got a "FIXD" engine code reader. I tend to usually drive older cars, so check engine lights are not exactly rare.

Now, I have a flip phone. Some people get mad at me for continuing to use one. (I had a nurse in the hospital who actually yelled at me because I didn't have a smart phone to monitor a sensor they wanted to put in my arm - I refused!) Others, usually men, comment that they wished they could go back to the flip phone, but just can't bring themselves to do it.

I have to admit that I actually do have a "smart" phone which I use for 2 things only: downloading and listening to audio books in the car and to hook up via Bluetooth to the FIXD sensor when the check engine light comes on. It is actually a Tracphone I just never activated.

This past week, the check engine light came on. It had been at least a year since I had used the sensor. I hooked up and the phone told me it was now incompatible with the FIXD app. Apparently if I don't update my phone to newer than an Android 10, I no longer can use the application and sensor which was bought and paid for. (I had an Android 8.) I wasn't too happy. 

This forced obsolescence, especially with tech, is unfair. It confirms my commitment to use the least amount of tech as possible in my life. This is both an economic and environmental reason. There certainly are more important reasons - spiritual for instance.

*********

Indeed, the natural gas fired power plant is real; its location to be less than 1/2 mile from my place, may be 1/4 mile. It hasn't been approved by the County Council yet, but I am sure it will be an uphill fight to oppose it. What I am finding in SC is that what is best for families is always trumped by the promise of revenue. (What do I expect? I am sure it is the same everywhere.)

Of course, the power company is offering nearby landowners, such as myself, cash to support the project in writing and promise not to oppose it in any way. (While not a public official, the money is being paid to me to try to influence a public official. This is pretty close to bribery.)

Oremus pro invicem!

Coming soon???

I have plenty of stuff I want to write about - some of it inspired by some of Charlie's recent posts on forced technology and the homesteading movement. I also have garden stuff and livestock stuff to record here.

But, the big news around here this week is that one of these may be coming soon within a few miles or less to our humble homestead. 

A natural gas fired power plant. I got a letter in the mail from the developer as a "nearby landowner".

There is a "information" meeting in Camden next. I will be there.

Oremus pro invicem!

Remembering Freedom

Remembering Freedom also available from Amazon.

From the author about why he wrote the book (from his substack):

My first job was pulling watermelons for my neighbor in the hot SC summer sun, walking and working beside people whose grandfathers had been enslaved by the grandfather of our now employer. I remember that I got paid $5.00 an hour for anything less than a half-day work, $25.00 for a half day, and $50.00 for a full day. I can also remember the excitement my brothers and I felt when the federal minimum wage jumped from $5.00 an hour to $7.00 an hour - we all thought we were getting a raise. But as so many under-the-table jobs go, our pay did not rise to match the federal update: we continued with the same pay scale as we currently had. That was alright, though: we chalked it up to not having a “real” job yet, and that things would be much more “official” when we had “real” jobs. It was, simply put, a sentiment that would refrain time and time again - one that reflects a longstanding yet recently challenged societal position as we enter more deeply into the inherited ramifications of the Enlightenment.

During my senior year of high school, I swapped out pulling watermelons during the summer for a job that would continue even during the colder months: the local hardware store. Our town was small (microscopic, compared to some!), and you can only sweep the floor, inventory the stock, and rearrange the display so many times. At a certain point, human creativity will combine with boredom to create some pretty ingenious things. And so, my days at the store saw me eating up the mass amounts of dead time between customers with anything from taking the leather from our recent cow and braid it into a bullwhip, to hand-writing poems and theological apologies, to even fashioning our own checker board from nuts and bolts. It was alright, I justified, because this was such a small town it didn’t constitute a real job. Real jobs wouldn’t see me with so much down time in between customers with no more legitimate work to do until one were to show up.

Off I went to college right after graduation. Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts had at the time one of the premier humanities programs out of all its peers. It also boasted the power to award the Apostolic Catechetical Diploma. Small though the school was, its excellent program of studies, coupled with its rigorous observation and celebration of the Sacred Liturgies, all set on the backdrop of its multi-million dollar campus nestled in the beautiful Blue Hills mountains of Warner New Hampshire enabled this school, in my opinion, to rival the academic prowess of many larger schools. How surprised I was, then, to find that when I got there many of my fellow students were prone to make complaints based on the premise that we were not a “real” school. What a “real” school was - besides being somewhat bigger with more money - was never really defined in these complaints. All I would get when I would ask was simply that we wouldn’t have to endure x, y, or z policy, whichever one that was the current object of opposition. Nevertheless, I thought to myself, I understand that this was a small (again, microscopic to some!) school, and that there were unique problems and quirks to having a school small.

I married very shortly after leaving life on a college campus. Finding myself newly married in a new state with no connections, no friends, no marketable skills (YOU try finding employment when your resume boasts nothing more than watermelon picking and an undergraduate degree in philosophy/liberal arts!) and an immediate need for income, I found myself working with a dual hat of producer/Human Resources for a small packaging company in Cleveland, OH. This company effectively packaged hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of product for various multi-million dollar companies worldwide - and had done so at the time for decades. This being said, the employee number at this company was well under 30 at any given time - and sometimes even in the mere single digits. You might not be surprised, given the trajectory of this conversation, to hear that I was surrounded by incessant comments about the company’s legitimacy: never a day went by when some quirk of company life wasn’t lamented and complained about in terms of “we wouldn’t have to do x, y, or z if we were a real company!” And even here, at what you might consider my first “real” job, I discounted and “understood” these complaints: we were such a small company, we were allowed to have a more “human” approach to employment than some of the supposed colder, authoritative, and “official” approaches of larger companies.

I wish I could say that the cries for the “real life” to stand up stopped with this place of employment. You may or may not be surprised to hear that this would not be the case. How surprised I was, at any rate, when not long after this I found myself at Basic Combat Training and were surrounded by “if we were in the real Army,” or “once we get to a real unit,” such and such a problem would not be the case anymore. I began to wonder: what is this real Army that people keep supposing exists with more surety than the life that is literally surrounding us! I would continue that wondering when I was surrounded by those same complaints of un-reality on my first deployment, my 2 year stint as an armored car driver at the oldest operable branch of the largest security company in the entire world, my second deployment, and, ultimately, by those who would criticize my position as an adoptive (and therefore not real) parent.

Eventually, through all of these experiences, I began to realize: human nature struggles to recognize reality, especially here in the 21st century. The same defects that caused the Jews to reject Christ (how could this be the Messiah) have finally found philosophical traction and consequence as found in societal structure. The Enlightenment, the Social Contractors, Baconian/Machiavellian approaches to reality, and Kantian metaphysics have paved the way for an anthropology and epistemology that would isolate Man from his fellow, set keep him in the confines of his own subjectivity, and create a worldview so absurd as to be invincible in its ability to shut down conversations: when everything can be boiled down to my point of view, no knowledge of the “real” world - let alone discussion about what that means - is possible. The necessary result? Freedom means the ability to do what you wish and desire - so long as you don’t step on anyone else’s toes. And, as a corollary, any prohibition on your desires makes you less free. It is indeed a lonely worldview to find yourself in.

Oremus pro invicem!

Oreo!

One of our new gilts, Oreo, farrowed last night. 4 litters on the ground right now!

God is good!

Oremus pro invicem!

Notes

Red farrowed 2 days ago. Patch followed last night. I have 3 pregnant gilts - one may be due on or around April 2. But I have no more farrowing pens ready. Get to work!!!

We also are suddenly back in eggs, gathering 2 dozen last night. But we haven't finished the new chicken coop we want to move 2 groups into together. More work!!

We 1/2 butchered a large hog on Saturday - the other half is on ice and will get done Thursday this week - I hope!

The garden is going in slowly. Corn was planted last week. I have had broccoli, kale and Brussel sprouts in for a few weeks and more started along with some spinach. I planted a few peas on Saturday. I started Roma and cherry tomatoes this weekend. I need to remember to bring all the starters in today as we are having another cold snap this week.

This all sounds like a lot of work, but it is a most satisfying kind of work, especially when done with together with family. 

There seems there is never enough time in the Spring to get everything done (still cutting wood for next winter) but God gives us just enough time if we use it wisely. I pray I do.

We are doing a novena to St. Joseph - what happens if you miss a day? God is not an accountant, but ....

Oremus pro invicem!

Why Can't I use what I have?

 Why Can't I use what I have?

Root coming due: UPDATE

Last night Root gave birth to 11 live pigs. All doing well this morning.

I don't think she is due until the 26th (just after we are due to have a catastrophic ice storm), but she is definitely coming along. We finished refurbishing (and strengthening - as she is an escape artist) her new farrowing pen and moved her into it on Saturday.

Oremus pro invicem!

of cows

My son gave me a new Buck knife for Christmas - I broke the tip off my last one doing some plumbing. But this just isn't any knife. It has a quote of sorts, referencing a comment I made during an interview which aired last year on an EWTN series on homesteading; I mentioned in this post. My part was very quick and very minor, but my memorable comment lives on at least for some .....

Oremus pro invicem!

Merry Christmas!!

The obligatory picture of our tree! 

Today on the feast of the Holy Family, Father J reiterated the constant and consistent Church teaching on the definition of marriage, the sanctity of life from the moment of conception, and the obligation of children to care for their elderly parents. 

I was surprised, but heartened, that the third was included with the first two.

Oremus pro invicem!