Students at UW-La Crosse protested the presence of coal-fired power plants at their school through a rally involving students, faculty and other members of the La Crosse community, including Mayor Matt Harter.

The rally was a part of Sierra Club’s National Day of Action, which involved rallies all over the United States.

Missy Ruplinger, environmental sustainablity director at UW-La Crosse, said UW-La Crosse’s Student Senate will likely pass a resolution Wednesday night calling on Gov. Jim Doyle and the DOA to focus more of their attention on the issue.

“It’s an institutional issue; it doesn’t just stop at Madison,” Ruplinger said, referring to Madison’s ongoing conversion away from coal power. “It’s the overall ideal of it — that we don’t want coal on any of our campuses, that we don’t want coal, period.”

Doyle announced in February that the Charter Street Coal Plant on the UW-Madison campus would gradually phase out coal in favor of biomass energy. At a recent meeting of the Joint Southeast Area Campus Committee, UW Physical Plant announced it would replace the four coal boilers with two that burn natural gas and one that burns biomass.

Jennifer Feyerherm of the Wisconsin Sierra Club said eight of Wisconsin’s 15 state-run coal plants power UW System campuses.

She said while UW’s plant has received considerable attention after the announced switch from coal, DOA still has not performed adequate analysis to ensure other Wisconsin state coal power plants meet Clean Air Act standards.

“What we’re finding is that their analysis was not complete,” Feyerherm said. “It’s a systemic problem in all of the state-owned coal plants.”

UW-La Crosse Chancellor Joe Gow, who spoke at the rally Tuesday, said his office and the administration of UW-La Crosse cannot make the official decision to convert the coal plants since the DOA controls the state power plants.

He said students are raising awareness around campus to pressure the DOA to take action to change to more cost-effective and environmentally friendly sources of energy for the campus.

“Our students in particular — and our faculty and staff also — are raising awareness about this and it wasn’t happening before,” Gow said. “I think it’s fair to say that with events like today’s gathering, people will become more interested and aware.”

Those opposed to the conversion of coal power plants on UW System campuses point to energy sources such as nuclear power and clean coal as alternatives to what they consider to be expensive and wasteful sources such as biomass and solar power.

Christina Wilson, upper Midwest regional director for Collegians for a Constructive Tomorrow, said she is worried the push for expensive alternative energy resources such as solar, biomass and wind power that would replace coal energy will cost too much money.

She added coal is relatively clean and effective compared to energy resources of the past.

“If you look back at the industrial revolution, it was sooty and everything was black,” Wilson said. “When you walk on the UW campus you don’t see soot everywhere. They’re burning clean coal.”