Rum Creek WMA (and America’s #1 CO2 Emitting Power Plant)

05-rum-creek-wma-whaun-7137Monday was a beautiful day and after the past 2 weeks of cold weather and rain Trey and I had to get out. We headed about 20 miles north to Lake Juliette to find the mysterious Rum Creek Wildlife Management Area. Google Maps has it completely wrong, where they label it to be is actually on the property of Georgia Power’s massive coal-fired power plant.

Turns out that Scherer Plant is the United States’ largest single point-source for carbon-dioxide emissions (a mere 25.3 million tons per year to be exact). In fact, in 2007 it was ranked 20th highest CO2 emitter in the world (out of 50,000 power plants worldwide)! Their ash ponds have also been of some concern after the disaster in East TN last year. I’ve been here in Macon for almost 18 months and no one told me that polluting, monstrosity was in my backyard.

Now I’m not one to dive into the whole global warming debate, but I do know that that much carbon-dioxide being emitted in one place can’t be good. Trey’s take on it was “I don’t like it. It puts smoke up and down and it hurts my eyes!” I agree, it is a bit of an eye sore in the middle of Lake Juliette.

After getting directions from GA Power’s friendly security guards we head to the south side of the lake and found a muddy road leading into the woods. The area doesn’t have any hiking trails and I couldn’t find a good map online anywhere (remember I said mysterious) so we just followed an old road into the woods to the lakeside. Trey had a blast playing with his toy digger/bulldozer on all the rocks covered in moss. He also continued to exercise his tree climbing talents (he’s getting good enough to keep his mother very concerned). We actually spent about 2 hours just hanging out in the woods before heading home. Fun times!