Avram Friedman For House District 116

The amazing and legendary Avram Friedman filed to run against Phil Haire in the 119th district - right next door to the ginormous Cliffside Power Plant in Rutherford County. Friedman has been creating, advocating, marketing, and innovating alternative energies for decades. Founder of the Canary Coalition, Friedman is perhaps the most environmentally progressive candidate ever to run for statehouse. From the press release:

"His opponent is incumbent Phil Haire who supports Duke Energy's decision to build Cliffside Unit 6, an 800 megawatt coalburning power plant in Rutherford County, a short distance from his district. Friedman opposes the plant as an unnecessary danger to public health and the environment.

Haire also voted for Senate Bill 3 in the 2007 legislative session, which Friedman promises to make into a campaign issue. This bill lifted a 25-year ban that prohibited the practice of charging electric ratepayers for construction-work-in-progress on new polluting coal and nuclear power plants.

In contrast to Haire, Friedman also promises to advocate strongly for comprehensive public transportation in North Carolina, major wind and solar energy development, utility rate-restructing to reward conservation and efficiency efforts, and a moratorium on the construction of new coal and nuclear power plants."

And homeboy's been blogging. This from a post on the Cliffside Hearings:

"They [residents of the area] learned that the new plant’s “modern” emission controls were not all they had been led to believe. There would be a substantial increase in mercury emissions from the new unit. CO2 emissions would increase by millions of tons each year. Arsenic, lead and other toxic emissions would increase substantially. They learned that scarce water supplies would be strained further as the plant would evaporate two million gallons of additional water each day. The local citizens learned that only thirty permanent new jobs would result from the operation of Cliffside Unit 6. And they learned that many more jobs would be created if the plant was scrapped and, instead, people were trained in the fields of energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies, like solar, wind and geothermal. By the time five or six environmental speakers had completed their statements the crowd sat in attentive silence. None of this was reported by the news media."

He's for real. With 30 years of organizing experience, you can expect him to be very competitive against Duke Energy's candidate.