3 Million Tons of Air Pollution

Reminder-over 3 million tons of air pollution, the equivalent of 8.1 gas plants has been approved to go in up the street from most of the town’s homes. Within a mile of the early learning center, the school, the senior center, the clinic, most of the town. This is just Project Skyway, it’s not the cumulative air pollution of Project Skyway, Land O’ Lakes, 52 traffic, farming equipment, construction etc.

How many gas plants in our town are acceptable for Google to give the school 1 million/yr in tax write offs? Did you bother to consider how many kids in the school need an inhaler and will now because of the air pollution you’re claiming is 100% worth it, the ER visits that will happen because however many children can’t breathe because it’s a fair trade off for some temporary jobs?

And no, you can’t even try to say they’re using “green” energy because docket 26-170 specifically says the green energy is not to power the data center, it’s for the grid. Recent news is a new gas peaker plant is going up in Owatonna, for the grid. The clean energy agreements being used are based on “credits” where they pollute one area then maybe plant trees somewhere else that gives them “credits” so their overall pollution numbers on paper go down. The pollution in that one area still remains however. On April 7th Xcel’s CEO said, in the same breathe as Google’s green energy, they’re building 4 new power plants. But don’t look at that, look over here at this shiny thing.