TTC Coal Road?
Opinion:
Toll roads and coal plants
June 24, 2006
Julia Whatley
The Waco Tribune Herald
Copyright 2006
Recently the Trib showed a map of the proposed 640-mile-long Trans-Texas Corridor-35 and the initial 316-mile toll road-and-rail segment between San Antonio and Dallas.
Notice the area through Williamson, Bell, Fall and McLennan counties, then deduce why TXU’s previous plans to build three coal-burning plants in Robertson and Milam counties were suddenly switched to McLennan County.
You will see, raising its ugly head, a 10-mile-wide “blue line” east of and roughly parallel to our Interstate 35. This marks the path of the TTC-35 tollway with its proposed electric-powered bullet train.
With 11 coal-burning plants planned in Texas, is corporate TXU interested only in lowering our electrical cost, as CEO John Wilder says?
Or, is the company actually expecting to reap more profits from three coal-burners concentrated in McLennan County?
These profits will come from the sale of TXU’s electricity to the tollway, which is to be financed by and contracted for 50 years to Cintra Concesiones de Infracstructuras de Transports, S.A. of Madrid, Spain.
Wilder mentions the lowering of “U.S. dependence on foreign energy sources and reductions of power prices” as a reason for the plants. Is the added pollution worth a bullet train’s expected necessary “shot” of electricity every 50 miles?
Our clean air can no more be replaced than our tons of black top soil can be rooted out to be concrete-covered with a toll highway-rail system. This land drew the forebears of today’s farmers and ranchers from Europe. We must stop such a travesty against our heritage of clean air and deep black soil just to enable a foreign- financed company to ship foreign goods through our state.
In this 50-year plan of toll road and rail, think of what this same burgeoning population will be breathing and eating and wearing when each mile of this folly will destroy 146 acres of productive land, plus fragmenting other farm or ranch acres, putting them out of use.
We must root out the officials who tout this unthinkable path of destruction through the Blackland Prairie, this “biggest land grab in Texas history” as Carole Keeton Strayhorn calls it.
Say “no” to Gov. Perry and his corporate backers who fail to respect the air we breathe and the productive soil we till.
Julia Whatley of Eddy is a retired teacher.
© 2006 The Waco Tribune-Herald: www.wacotrib.com
Toll roads and coal plants
June 24, 2006
Julia Whatley
The Waco Tribune Herald
Copyright 2006
Recently the Trib showed a map of the proposed 640-mile-long Trans-Texas Corridor-35 and the initial 316-mile toll road-and-rail segment between San Antonio and Dallas.
Notice the area through Williamson, Bell, Fall and McLennan counties, then deduce why TXU’s previous plans to build three coal-burning plants in Robertson and Milam counties were suddenly switched to McLennan County.
You will see, raising its ugly head, a 10-mile-wide “blue line” east of and roughly parallel to our Interstate 35. This marks the path of the TTC-35 tollway with its proposed electric-powered bullet train.
With 11 coal-burning plants planned in Texas, is corporate TXU interested only in lowering our electrical cost, as CEO John Wilder says?
Or, is the company actually expecting to reap more profits from three coal-burners concentrated in McLennan County?
These profits will come from the sale of TXU’s electricity to the tollway, which is to be financed by and contracted for 50 years to Cintra Concesiones de Infracstructuras de Transports, S.A. of Madrid, Spain.
Wilder mentions the lowering of “U.S. dependence on foreign energy sources and reductions of power prices” as a reason for the plants. Is the added pollution worth a bullet train’s expected necessary “shot” of electricity every 50 miles?
Our clean air can no more be replaced than our tons of black top soil can be rooted out to be concrete-covered with a toll highway-rail system. This land drew the forebears of today’s farmers and ranchers from Europe. We must stop such a travesty against our heritage of clean air and deep black soil just to enable a foreign- financed company to ship foreign goods through our state.
In this 50-year plan of toll road and rail, think of what this same burgeoning population will be breathing and eating and wearing when each mile of this folly will destroy 146 acres of productive land, plus fragmenting other farm or ranch acres, putting them out of use.
We must root out the officials who tout this unthinkable path of destruction through the Blackland Prairie, this “biggest land grab in Texas history” as Carole Keeton Strayhorn calls it.
Say “no” to Gov. Perry and his corporate backers who fail to respect the air we breathe and the productive soil we till.
Julia Whatley of Eddy is a retired teacher.
© 2006 The Waco Tribune-Herald:
posted by Porkus Maximus Tex: at Saturday, June 24, 2006
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