First-Time Organizer Helps Beat Back Utah Coal Plant
Former San Rafael, California, firefighter Jim Kennon was injured in the line of duty and had to retire on disability. "That wasn't an easy thing, to leave the profession," he says. "I was a firefighter for 20 years and I loved that job."
Kennon went back to college and taught elementary school science for several years before retiring to a piece of land his family owned in Sevier County, Utah. There, in the town of Richfield, he completed the house he lives in today.
But Kennon's little piece of paradise was threatened by a proposed coal-fired power plant in Sevier County. The 270-megawatt facility, to be operated by Nevco Energy Co. and the Sevier Power Company, would have been located in the nearby farm community of Sigurd, below. Its 462-foot-high smokestack would be the tallest structure in Utah.
"My wife has asthma," Kennon says, "and there are people in town—myself included—who are on oxygen. Coal is dirty, it pollutes our air and adds to global warming, and when we have other alternatives, I just can't see people having to put up with dirtier air here."
In response, Kennon co-founded Sevier Citizens for Clean Air and Water to galvanize local opposition to the plant. And eight years later, on December 4, 2009, the Utah Supreme Court ruled against construction of the Sigurd plant, saying its emissions permit, issued by the Utah Division of Air Quality in 2004, was "woefully inadequate."
"The court's decision was a victory for the Utah Chapter of the Sierra Club and two Sevier County retirees, Jim Kennon and Dick Cuminsky, who led the local opposition," reported the Associated Press.
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