(From the Sierra Club)
On Tuesday, residents from southwestern Missouri will speak out at a meeting of the Missouri Comprehensive State Energy Plan steering committee at Missouri Southern State University’s Billingsly Student Center in Joplin. The meeting begins at 1pm. Earlier this month, Governor Nixon started convening forums and taking comments on the state’s first comprehensive energy planning process in decades.
Missouri is heavily dependent on coal-fired power plants, which are the largest polluters in the state. Missouri also currently lags behind neighboring states like Illinois, Iowa and Kansas when it comes to clean energy investment, shutting the door on job creation in the state.
Residents of southwestern Missouri have been impacted for decades by Missouri’s dependence on coal. In Springfield, City Utilities has raised rates in the past year to prop up outdated coal-fired power plants and to build a risky landfill for its coal ash waste that puts drinking water at risk.
Doctors, residents, clean energy business leaders and water experts will call on Governor Nixon to ensure he uses the state energy planning process to address the state’s costly pollution from coal plants and the threat of climate change by building a clean energy economy.
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