An environmental group that wants PNM to stop using coal to generate electricity is using deceptive and misleading images in its billboard campaign.  New Energy Economy on July 2, 2012, announced an advertising campaign to pressure PNM to switch completely to solar power.  Its campaign, entitled “Coal Hurts,” shows a child sucking air through a respirator against a background of heavy smoke pouring from a cluster of smokestacks.  But the photo has nothing to do with PNM’s power plant.  And though the child in the photo has asthma,  NEE won’t say if the child’s problem was in any way caused by PNM’s power plant.

New Energy Economy ‘s campaign targets PNM’s  San Juan Generating Plant,  But NEE admits that the photograph of heavy pollution pouring from four smokestacks is not of PNM’s plant.  We obtained a photograph of the San Juan  plant from PNM.

The real PNM San Juan Generating plant is shown here.  We apologize that the file is too big to reproduce on this page.

NEE will not tell us where and when the photograph it used in its billboards was taken.  It will not reveal if the photograph was of a coal-fired electric generating plant or another type of industrial facility, or if the plant shown in its billboards is even still in operation.

Tugging at Heartstrings With Misleading Health Facts

We asked NEE if the child shown in the photograph is suffering respiratory ailments caused by inhaling emissions from a coal-fired power plant.  NEE dodged answering the question directly.  An e-mail from Mariel Nanasi, NEE’s Executive Director, stated, “the boy depicted is a boy who suffers from asthma; he lives in the toxic shadow of the San Juan coal plant. 1 out 5 middle schoolers and 1 out 4 high school students in NM suffer from asthma.”  She did not claim that his respiratory illness was in any way caused by PNM’s plant.

Her figures on the incidence of asthma are also misleading.  The ratios come from a 2009 report by the New Mexico Asthma Program Environmental Health Epidemiology Bureau.  According to that report,18.8% of middle school children were told that  sometime during their lifetime they had asthma.  That is the “lifetime prevalence measure.” But only half that figure, 9,4% actually had asthma.  Contrary to the imagery of “living in the toxic shadow of the San Juan plant,” middle school children from northwestern New Mexico had both the lowest current asthma prevalence (7.6%) and  lowest lifetime prevalence (16.6%) among their peers in the state.

High school students in “the toxic shadow of the San Juan plant” also had the lowest lifetime prevalance (22.2%) and the second lowest current prevalance (8.9%) among their peers statewide.  The statewide current prevalence of asthma among all New Mexico high school students was half (12.2%) of the 1 in 4 figure provided by NEE.

Switch to Solar Would Give New Mexico the Nation’s Highest Electiricy Rates, Says PNM

According to PNM spokeswoman Valerie Smith, doing what NEE wants–replacing coal with solar power at the San Juan plant–would cost upwards of $4 billion.  “New Mexico would likely have the highest energy costs in the nation.” says Smith.

We asked NEE about that.  They again had no direct response, except to say, “We are all waiting for PNM to provide an affordable transition plan from coal to wind, solar and natural gas.”  Nanasi dismissed the cost of the transition and the increased costs for ratepayers, and blamed PNM’s “institutional bias” for its reluctance to close the San Juan plant and replace it with an all solar facility

PNM’s Smith pointed out that the San Juan plant is a “a baseload plant, which means the power must be instantly available to serve customers when they need it – including at night when the sun doesn’t shine.”  The San Juan plant provides electricity for more than 2 million customers in the Southwest United States.

Related:  Enviro Group Launches Anti-Coal Campaign