I’ve been on the road the past few weeks in some beautiful parts of Maryland! GenOn, the corporate owners of the Morgantown (in Newburg, MD) and Dickerson (in Dickerson, MD) coal plants, has applied for modifications of their existing water permits, and I attended the first of the public informational meetings.

The meetings are a bit intimidating at first, I kept flashing back to chemistry classes in high school. There are a lot of numbers and discussion of point sources and data collection. But the point of these hearings isn’t to understand every detail.

At the end of the day these plants are in the backyards of communities, so it is important for citizens to have a say in the process and know what Gen On is applying to do to the nearby waterways. If there weren’t public hearings like these, permits would get approved with no one asking critical questions and without community members being able to hold Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) and GenOn accountable.

I was so impressed with the questions local citizens asked in the room, and the commitment they had by showing up to these meetings on weeknights. More folks need to be involved in these issues and MDE should make it easier for them. The meetings should be advertised widely to all the local groups, list servs, and neighborhoods and the meeting space and time should be as convenient as possible for that community.

Until then I’ll be doing my best to make sure folks know about upcoming hearings. I’ll be there as well, my lack of chemistry understanding be damned, because I care about making these permits as strong as possible for the health of Maryland’s communities and environment.