County denies comp plan amendment for power plant

By John M. Ayers

The Gilchrist County Commission listened and waited until it was time to make a decision on the Seminole Electric application for a Comprehensive Plan Amendment to allow an electric power generating facility to be constructed on 520 acres of property located northeast of Bell.
The Comprehensive Plan Amendment that was being considered identified a maximum of 5 million gallons of fresh water to be pumped from the ground per day to be used by the Tampa-based cooperative for cooling and other necessary needs. The commission meeting room had a capacity crowd attending when the 5 p.m. public hearing began. Ultimately, the board voted unanimously to deny the application.
The meeting began as Commission Chairman D. Ray Harrison, Jr welcomed the crowd to the public hearing. He explained how the meeting would be conducted as Laura Dedenbach would present the proposed Ordinance 2010-02, the Seminole Electric Comprehensive Plan Amendment to the board. The staff of Seminole Electric Cooperative would then present a staff report involving the proposed application for an electrical generating power facility. The public would then be given three minutes each to present information in consideration of the proposed application being considered by the County Commission. A time would be given if needed for questions to be answered by Seminole Electric staff for both the public and the Board of Commissioners.
When the public addressed the five Commissioners, they questioned what the proposed 5 million gallons of fresh drinking water would be used for by Seminole Electric. Robert Yarbrough explained the proposed facility would use and recycle water for cooling continually until the liquid was identified as contaminated. He explained at that time the water would then be collected and held in a tank on site until it could be transported from the site to a contaminated fluids facility outside of Gilchrist County. The Seminole Electric staff did not identify how many gallons or barrels of this contaminated water would be disposed in a period of time. They did explain that it could be thousands of gallons of water in comparison to the 5 million gallons of water they could use for the cooling process.
Mike Campbell, General Manager of cooperative partner Central Florida Electric, explained to the Commission that Seminole Electric would be a good partner and great neighbor in Gilchrist County. He pointed out their track record for environmental issues is very good and the passage of this Comp Plan Amendment would be a good move for Gilchrist County and the cooperative customers in Gilchrist County.
Mike Opalinski, a spokesman for Seminole Electric, reported to the board that Seminole is considering a process identified as dry cooling that could be considered for the proposed Gilchrist County facility. “We have shown you a worst case scenario involving a proposed electrical generation facility to be built in Gilchrist County. We want the right to continue to bring improvements to Gilchrist County for this proposed facility,” he explained in his closing statement.
Commissioner Randy Durden said, “I guess it’s kinda like you really don’t know who to believe sometimes on these things. I know the board has gone through some water issues here in the past two/three years that we really didn’t know about. I’m going to give you an example… which identifies the Gainesville Regional Utilities well field that had been permitted in Alachua County near the High Springs area. This basically affected our water supply when they were granted a withdrawal up to 30 million gallons a day and it was transferred out of the SRWMD into the St. Johns Water Management District without us even knowing about it. So this puts us more on edge when we are talking about water use, but I think this goes above and beyond water use. I’m really not comfortable with the proposed boundaries; I don’t think there is enough, as far as proposing electric generating plants. I don’t believe they’re strong enough for Gilchrist County. I think we are in a unique situation, here in the County. I don’t believe that the passing of this ordinance is going to insure the protection of our natural resources as set forth on the quality and quantity as set forth in our Comprehensive Land Use Plan. I don’t believe that it’s compatible with the surrounding land use since it will be in close proximity to the future public well source that’s going to be critical for the protection of our natural resources for the future of Gilchrist County. I also don’t believe that it promotes the public health, safety and welfare when it has the potential to have a negative impact on our natural resources. I think that any negative impact to these natural resources will most certainly not be in the best interest of the public health or to general welfare. The protection of our natural resources is critical to the future of Gilchrist County and its citizens. The proposed addition of tax dollars to the County, in my opinion, does not outweigh the protection of our natural resources for our citizens in the future. Our Vision Statement that was just revised by the citizens of the Gilchrist County says that we will preserve our proud heritage, our natural resources and our agriculture. I believe we need to decide tonight whether we want this type of high intensity use anywhere in Gilchrist County, not just on this 520 acres; I think it goes beyond just 520 acres. We have talked about water use, but nothing relating to noise pollution or anything involving those type problems. It’s my opinion that we need to DENY this ordinance… and I think that not only do we need to deny this ordinance tonight, we need to deny it and then next year when we start through our evaluation appraisal process, we need to decide if this is the kind of business or if this is the kind of high intensity use we want anywhere in the County. I think we need to decide that and I think we need to put that information in our comp plan. Mr. Chairman, I will put this in the form of a motion that we DENY Ordinance 2010-02 on those grounds.” Commissioner Sharon Langford quickly agreed and gave a second in support of the motion. The Chairman called for a roll call vote as each board member was in support of the denial of Ordinance 2010-02.