By Jason Allen

A coalition of students around campus wants to raise awareness of the university’s reliance on coal-powered energy.

UK Beyond Coal is among those who decided its impact would be stronger if it joined together with others to fight for its cause.

This group met with the Board of Trustees Oct. 25 and called for a change in the university’s reliance on coal-powered energy.

Two coal-fired boilers, one located near a hospital, serve as the campus’ main source for energy and heat, and it is these two boilers that the student coalition has asked the Board to take down.

The coalition believes that the two boilers put everyone in the area at risk.

“As a student group, we believe the university needs to first and foremost put the public health of the students and faculty and staff on campus before anything else,” Patrick Johnson, one of the group’s leaders, said.

In 1970, the Clean Air Act was enacted, allowing the Environmental Protection Agency to create certain codes and regulations that plants must follow.

The issue the group is bringing up is that both the boilers on campus were built before 1970, and the group said the boilers do not follow the EPA’s new codes.

As a result, both of these power plants have little to no air pollution control, the coalition says.

Bob Wiseman, vice president for facilities management, said the coal power plants are completely legal.

“Coal plants, like we have on our campus, are governed by the state Division of Air Quality, and then they give us a permit to operate them,” he said. “That operating permit stands on its own.”

Wiseman lives about two blocks from one of the coal power plants and said he wouldn’t have built his house there if he felt he was in any danger.

However, students in the UK Beyond Coal movement think this should change.

“We are very against the University of Kentucky continuing to allow this to happen,” Johnson said. “We are trying to push the administration to see the potential for geothermal and solar energy on campus.”

Some argue that converting to such energy methods would take many years to do and would be very costly.

Tyler Hess, a sustainable agriculture junior and a member of the coalition, said otherwise.

The solution “is especially doable, we just need to figure the best renewable energy for our area,” he said.

The coalition and Hess are not alone in their views. Ball State University is in the process of converting its campus to 90 percent geothermal energy by 2020.

“It is inevitable that the University of Kentucky will have to switch too in the future,” Hess said.

He said the coalition is asking UK not to wait to make these changes.

“We are definitely going to continue to put pressure on the administration,” Johnson said.