
OUC coal plants linked to east Orange County cancer spike, lawsuit claims - wonderwonder
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-ne-ouc-coal-class-action-suit-20181218-story.html
======
brudgers
OUC exists for the benefit the City of Orlando's residents. Stanton was built
where it was built to externalize it's pollution keeping utility rates for its
citizen customers low and avoiding property value impacts to the city. It was
deemed acceptable to externalize the impact on the unincorporated community of
Bithlo. Since Stanton was built, the area within city limits around the old
OUC Ivanhoe Plant has significantly gentrified.

Orange County began promoting development in the area in the 1980's. It
widened Lake Underhill Road and extended Alafaya Trail south of SR50 toward
FL528 (the Bee Line). Stanton was part of the development plan because
OUC/Orlando chipped in on the infrastructure costs.

The lawsuit's 30,000 potentially affected people are not among OUC's 200k
power customers. They live outside Orlando's city limits in Orange County.
Their power is at market rate from Duke Energy. All those people live out near
Stanton by design. The first of those developments, Huckleberry, was
affordable and convenient because the road network was planned for further
development, e.g. the 408.

Coal firing Stanton was always a bit of boondoggle. Orlando is a long way from
any mineable coal face. People knew its location would exhaust into both of
Florida's major water sheds. The site sits in the south end of the St. John's
watershed and just north of the Florida Everglades headwaters in Deseret Ranch
south of the Bee Line.

------
jillesvangurp
I live in a former east german neighborhood in Berlin. When I moved here 10
years ago, lots of apartments were still coal heated. Buildings had lots of
dirt on them and you could smell it in the winter. Burning coal creates lots
of smelly smog. That's also a huge problem in places like China.

Smog kills people by the millions. It's a slow killer that's why nobody gives
a shit. Average lifespan decreases measurably by many years in areas with
heavy smog. Living next to a busy street or coal plant is not good for your
health.

That's why diesel, coal, etc. need to get banned in a hurry. Suing coal plants
for killing their neighborhoods is just as logical going after tobacco
companies. It will basically kill that industry in no time. Good riddance; the
sooner the better. Meanwhile, make them pay for the damage they do.
Incentivize them to clean up their act or pull the plug on their operations.

~~~
skocznymroczny
What do you propose as replacement for coal? Both for electricity and heating
up homes?

~~~
jillesvangurp
Clean energy + batteries seem to be eating that up rapidly in places where
they invest in that kind of thing. Simply ramp up investments there and this
problem can be solved.

Even the US is doing this. Meanwhile, force remaining plants to install
filters and fine them appropriately for killing their neighbors every month
they don't do this. Of course, there's no such thing as cheap coal when you
factor that in. Most of this stuff is already unsustainable from an economic
point of view. That's why plants are shutting down, plans for new ones are
getting shelved, etc.

Coal without subsidies and government protection, is not going to last long.

~~~
wonderwonder
I agree with you, but interesting part about this suit is that it does not
claim that contaminants are being emitted via the smoke. There are essentially
large hills of radioactive coal ash just sitting on the site, the residue from
the burned coal. They are just sitting in the open and the wind is blowing it
into the surrounding area.

~~~
village-idiot
Ironically, these piles are usually produced by the electrostatic filters that
prevent smog and smoke. IIRC most plants keep them in (really toxic) ponds
specifically to prevent the dust issue.

~~~
rbanffy
Can't we process that into something useful? There has to be some useful thing
that can be done with that.

~~~
wonderwonder
They use some of it to make cinder blocks.

------
cmrdporcupine
In Ontario we closed every single one of our coal plants over a decade ago and
it is a night and day improvement in air quality. Our power generation is
mostly nuclear and hydroelectric, with about 5-10% filled in by a combination
of natural gas and wind generation. I drive around in an electric car which is
fueled almost entirely by non-CO2 emitting energy. That feels good.

A global ban on all coal energy would be a modest but important improvement on
many fronts, even if it means a switch to natural gas.

~~~
merpnderp
Too late. To get this natural gas would require fracking, and much of the
world now believes their environment will be destroyed if they frak. So we end
up with developing nations burning dirty coal when switching to nat-gas would
be cheaper and 99% cleaner.

~~~
ryanmercer
>believes their environment will be destroyed if they frak.

Because there are valid reasons to believe so based on the way some fracking
operations have been run. Contaminated ground water (look at Wyoming) and
potentially even seismic related risk (a 5.6M earthquake in Oklahoma may have
been directly caused by fracking).

Hydraulic fracturing can also result in its own air pollution, noise pollution
etc.

Sure, it can probably be done safely but a single mistake could have wide-
reaching and long-lasting implications. Instead of replacing one bad thing
with another risky thing we need to get less spooked by modern nuclear
reactors,and renewables, until (if ever) we figure out fusion.

~~~
njarboe
"directly caused by fracking"

Those big earthquakes in Oklahoma were caused by waste water injection wells
so "indirectly caused by hydrocarbon extraction" (fracking and oil well waste
water being injected) would be closer to the truth.

------
mikeash
Good. It's outrageous that people are allowed to dump waste on other people
and we just act like it's perfectly normal. It's even more outrageous that the
people who claim to be the most concerned with individual rights and basic
freedoms don't see pollution for the massive violation of property and
personal rights that it obviously is.

~~~
njarboe
I would say that almost all of "them" are concerned with pollution, but people
with that view are not the ones you hear about. They would just sound like
reasonable people then. It wouldn't set off peoples' outrage (like you just
stated) button and get them to click on the article taking about "them".

------
bearjaws
I lived in Avalon Park and Stoney Brook for 3 years, got diagnosed with Non-
Seminoma Testicular Cancer (one of the rarer ones) 3 years ago.

I'm conflicted on whether this is responsible or not, no family history of
Testicular Cancer. I'm not sure if I should join this class action lawsuit, it
seems unlikely to go anywhere since proving that cancer was caused by _XYZ_ is
difficult.

~~~
brudgers
I hope you have a quick and full recovery.

~~~
bearjaws
It was an arduous process, 12 weeks of chemotherapy due to it spreading to 2
lymphnodes.

But 3 years later I am still cancer free!

------
dopamean
Holy shit. I lived in Eastwood for 3 years. My brother was born and raised in
that neighborhood and still lives there. My father died of pancreatic cancer.
He was one of the first homes bought and built on his street when Eastwood was
first being built. His wife suffered from ovarian cancer at one point. I dont
know what to say.

Edit: My wife went to high school in Avalon Park for 4 years and lived in that
neighborhood for most of her life as well. She also had teenage osteo sarcoma.

------
pjc50
I'm fairly sure EU powerplants have been required to do ash capture (usually
electrostatic) in addition to acid rain mitigation measures for some time, to
avoid this kind of thing.

------
ajuc
It is incredibly ironic that people protesting nuclear powerplants increase
their exposure to radiactivity :)

~~~
rcMgD2BwE72F
How many coal power plants have been built _because of_ the closure of nuclear
power plants?

~~~
belorn
A while back there was a story on HN that link to a page that listed every
country and how much of their energy consumption get created from different
sources.

One very noticeable aspect is that almost every country create their energy
through either coal or nuclear power, with all other usually representing a
singular digit. If it has 20% coal, then around 70% will be nuclear. If its
70% coal, 20% nuclear. Nothing is more clear cut when comparing France and
Germany next to each other.

~~~
mikeash
How recent were those numbers? The US is currently around 30% coal, 20%
nuclear (so only about 50% combined), 32% gas, and almost all of the rest is
renewables of various sorts. Germany is 35% coal, 12% nuclear, 13% gas, 35%
renewables. France is 72% nuclear, 12% hydro, 8% coal and gas. I'm having
trouble finding the exact breakdown of coal and gas for France, but it looks
like gas dominates.

~~~
rypskar
Is probably talking about
[https://www.electricitymap.org/?wind=false&solar=false&page=...](https://www.electricitymap.org/?wind=false&solar=false&page=map&remote=true).
Is live, or close to live data

~~~
belorn
It looks like it but either I remember very incorrectly, or the numbers for
Germany has changed significant since the summer. Found this which might
explain why: [https://www.energy-charts.de/power.htm?source=all-
sources&we...](https://www.energy-charts.de/power.htm?source=all-
sources&week=51&year=2017)

One thing through, did forget that gas hold a large portion of energy
production and had clumped it together with coal.

------
tempay
For those in the EU: [http://archive.is/GfC2X](http://archive.is/GfC2X)

------
vharuck
Forgive me if I missed it, but what's the evidence the plant's operations
_actually_ caused cancer cases? I work for a state cancer registry, and in my
experience, reports of potential cancer clusters are rarely shown true. Going
by a presentation and the audience's reactions at this year's NAACCR
conference, most registries have similar experiences.

That's not to say the claims are disproven, but a cancer diagnosis is a rare
event, and childhood cancer is an order of magnitude rarer.

This is one of those times where "small and biased sample" is a valid
criticism.

~~~
wonderwonder
The article is not great. The actual lawsuit is more informative. At its heart
its a property damage lawsuit rather than personal injury / death. It claims
to have physical proof that the area is contaminated with polonium and other
carcinogens far in excess of allowable levels. Specifics in regards to cancer
levels are also in the lawsuit. Link to the legal filing is in this thread.

------
ben_w
I can’t read this story because of geoblocking.

How can a _coal_ company possibly expose anyone to Polonium, half-life of 138
days and not produced by any chemical process?

~~~
Johnny555
Po-210 is in the decay chain of U-238:

[https://nucleonica.com/polonium210.aspx](https://nucleonica.com/polonium210.aspx)

 _it is constantly being produced in nature from the decay of uranium-238 –
the main component of uranium in the earth. Due to this “equilibrium”, the
concentration of Po-210 in nature is approximately 75 µg of Po-210 for every
ton of uranium-238_

It's a commonly known byproduct from burning coal, even though it's very rare,
the sheer volume of coal burnt means that a lot of it accumulates.

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001623611...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016236118314467)

[http://www.shl.uiowa.edu/news/polonium.xml](http://www.shl.uiowa.edu/news/polonium.xml)

[https://www.chromatographytoday.com/news/gc-
mdgc/32/breaking...](https://www.chromatographytoday.com/news/gc-
mdgc/32/breaking-news/coal-burning-power-plants-affect-po210-in-marine-
life/15363)

~~~
ben_w
Ok, those PPMs are surprisingly high.

1.5 million tonnes per year, 100ppm U-238 -> 150 tonnes U-238/year, 75μg
Po/tonne U -> 11,500μg Po/plant-year, LD-50 human adult < 1μg

------
wonderwonder
The actual legal complaint:

[https://myeclerk.myorangeclerk.com/CaseDetails?caseId=108169...](https://myeclerk.myorangeclerk.com/CaseDetails?caseId=10816988&caseIdEnc=cN7eLZFEyFcmazNah%2BT9pVndLKRaPwmr13rBLDwPxjJuFfboWcif1co2veb%2B%2FBq6MK6Rj%2FhqtJQteqGw0lbyUlPDugWIwj%2FSsFPqszeaYfs%3D&fbclid=IwAR0c2SXeIu55gPSrPTQGiNdQXYrked1enDKT9RB9Vkw8Kj2MSeyE3qj_gco)

------
mrfusion
I wonder why they need those coal plants. There’s an enormous looking nuclear
plant on the outskirts of Orlando.

~~~
wonderwonder
That's actually this plant, a coal and natural gas plant.

~~~
mikeash
It should be noted that the iconic hyperboloid nuclear cooling towers are
actually unrelated to nuclear power. Many nuclear plants use them, but many do
not, and many non-nuclear plants also use them.

~~~
ams6110
The cooling towers are used to cool waste water before discharging back to
rivers/lakes, if I am not mistaken. Too bad there's not a practical way to put
that heat to better use.

~~~
mikeash
Right. Nuclear plants turn heat into electricity the same way coal plants do,
they just generate the heat differently, so the second stage of the process
looks similar for both. Some plants are built where there's enough water flow
(or enough lack of concern over the environmental problems) that the towers
aren't needed.

~~~
village-idiot
For a while the Russians had a designed plant that produced electricity, steam
heat for nearby homes, and desalinated water with what energy was left.
Apparently the design was abandoned, which is kind of a shame.

