A Power Company's Quiet Land-Buying Spree Could Shield It From Coal Ash Cleanup Costs
Over the past several years, utility giant Georgia Power has embarked on an unusual buying spree, paying top dollar for people’s property in places where cheap land was easy to find.
In 2016, it bought a veterinarian’s 5-acre lot in the rolling hills of northwest Georgia for roughly double the appraised value. The following year, it acquired 28 acres of flood-prone land in southwest Georgia’s pecan belt for nearly four times what the local tax assessor said it was worth. By the year after that, it had paid millions of dollars above the appraised value for hundreds of acres near a winding gravel road in a central Georgia town with no water lines and spotty cellphone service.
Two things united the properties: They were all near coal-fired power plants that generated toxic waste stored in unlined ponds at those sites. And they were all purchased after the Environmental Protection Agency finalized new regulations in 2014 governing the disposal of such waste, known as coal ash. All told, the utility paid over $15 million for nearly 1,900 acres close to five of its 12 power plant sites, according to an investigation by Georgia Health News and ProPublica.
The costly land purchases offer an enormous potential payoff to Georgia Power, one of the largest producers of coal ash waste in the country, the investigation found. They may allow the utility to forestall millions of dollars in cleanup costs outlined by the December 2014 regulations.
Read more: https://www.propublica.org/article/a-power-companys-quiet-land-buying-spree-could-shield-it-from-coal-ash-cleanup-costs