燃媒发电厂煤灰处理引发争议

Coal consumption is increasing in many parts of the world, driven by skyrocketing energy demands in rapidly developing countries like China. But with coal comes pollution: from climate-changing carbon dioxide to coal ash, the powdery toxic waste left over from burning coal to produce electricity.

在很多经济快速增长的国家里，例如中国，由于对能源的需求直线上升，煤炭的消耗量也与日俱增。但是污染问题随之而来。这些污染物质包括导致气候变化的二氧化碳，以及发电厂燃烧煤炭后产生的有毒煤灰。

In the United States, coal-fired power plants produce more than 130 million tons of coal waste each year. The debate over how to dispose of it is playing out in the small town of Labadie, Missouri where the controversy is pitting local residents against the Midwestern utility company, Ameren.

在美国，以煤为燃料的发电厂每年产生1亿3千万吨煤灰。密苏里州小城镇拉巴迪正在辩论如何处理这些废料。辩论的一方是镇上居民，另一方是中西部的阿莫林电力公司。

It all started with the Labadie ladies book club back in the summer of 2009.

2009年夏天，拉巴迪镇妇女读书俱乐部聚会。

"Everybody was just gathering, and somebody kind of off-handedly said, 'Oh, did you all hear that so-and-so just sold his bottom ground,'" says long-time area resident Kay Genovese. "And nobody had heard about that, and she said, 'Yeah, I heard he sold it to Ameren.'"

闲聊时，一位名叫吉诺维斯的会员说起，镇上某人刚刚把他的一块低地卖给了阿莫林公司。

Bottom ground is land in the floodplain of the Missouri River. Genovese says at the book club the next month, they found out another farmer had sold his land.

低地指的是指密苏里河滩上的地。吉诺维斯说，在读书会下个月的聚会上，知道又有一个农民把他的土地卖掉了。

"And we were like, 'Oh, to Ameren again?' Three months in a row, we kept hearing about these different farmers selling their ground to Ameren."

“我们当时就问：又是卖给阿莫林公司吗？此后三个月，我们不断听说有农民把地卖给阿莫林公司。”

The book club ladies started asking questions. They found out that the utility company Ameren was planning to build a 160 hectare [400 acre] coal ash landfill in the floodplain, next door to its massive power plant in Labadie.

读书会的女士们开始有了疑问。她们得知，阿莫林电力公司正计划在拉巴迪镇这片临近公司的河滩上，开一个占地160公顷的煤灰掩埋场。

Shift supervisor Jim Dean says, with its four huge turbines, Labadie can generate enough power to supply electricity to almost half a million homes. To do it, the place burns coal by the train load.

公司当班主管吉姆·狄恩说，拉巴迪工厂这4座巨型涡轮机生产的电力可以供应将近50万个家庭。为了达到这个发电量，他们得成车成车地烧煤。

"Each train has about 130 cars in it. Each car holds 100 tons of coal. And we’ll burn one car, 100 tons of coal, in about four minutes with all four units at full load," Dean says.

“每列火车有130节车皮，每节车皮装100吨煤。我们这4座涡轮机大约每4分钟就要烧一整车皮、也就是100吨煤。”

At two coal trains a day, that works out to about 10 million tons of coal a year. Approximately seven percent of that - over half a million tons - is left over as coal ash.

每天需要两列火车的煤炭。一年要燃烧1千万吨煤。其中大约百分之7、也就是50多吨最后变成了煤灰。阿莫林公司可以回收这50多万吨煤灰的一半。

Ameren recycles more than half of it. The rest gets mixed with water, and sluiced out to two open ponds next to the plant. The coal ash settles out to the bottom, and the remaining water gets discharged, untreated, into the Missouri River.

另外一半跟水搀在一起，经由闸门进入发电厂附近的两个池塘。煤灰沉入水底，而未经处理的水则就流入密苏里河中。

Ameren’s Vice President of Environmental Services, Mike Menne, says those ponds are running out of room. At a 160 hectares, the new landfill would be big enough to replace them both, and take ash from Ameren’s Meramec and Rush Island plants, too.

阿莫林公司主管环保的副总裁迈克·门尼说，这两个池塘都满了，新开掘160公顷面积的掩埋场，除了足以取代这两个池塘之外，还可以收容阿莫林公司在马雷马克和拉什岛两处发电厂的煤灰。