Conservationist Says Coal Plant Emissions Could Damage Smokies

By Debra McCown
Reporter / Bristol Herald Courier
Published: June 18, 2008

ABINGDON, Va. – The coal-fired power plant proposed for Wise County would exacerbate damage to air and water quality in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, environmental advocates said Tuesday.

“The air quality in the Smokies is already degraded considerably,” said Don Barger, senior regional director for the National Parks Conservation Association.  “This would exacerbate the problem ... in a situation that is really overloaded and that we are trying to clean up.”

He said at least 90 species of plants have suffered direct damage and some streams in the park are so polluted trout can no longer live in them – “and there’s nobody upstream.”

He said coal-fired power plants west of the national park are largely responsible for the pollution – and better technology is available to help protect air quality in the Smokies.

He said a survey showed the number one reason people visit the Smokies is for the views but pollution from coal-fired plants impair the view 90 percent of the time.

“That’s over nine million people each year, $2 billion input into the regional economy,” Barger said of park visitors. “This proposal would put 3,300 tons of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere. Why is sulfur dioxide so important? Sulfur dioxide is the principal pollutant that causes visibility impairment and three quarters of the sulfur dioxide in our region comes from the coal plants.”

Doug Cortez, a consultant retained by the organization, said he does not believe the technology Dominion Virginia Power is proposing for the 585-megawatt plant should be classified as clean coal.

“The General Assembly has passed a law that declares this clean-coal technology,” Cortez said. “I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know what’s the definition is of clean-coal technology ... but as an engineer, it would be hard for me to call this clean-coal technology.”

He said while the circulating fluidized bed technology would be the only choice for burning waste coal, another technology – integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) – would be the cleanest and, when climate change laws take effect, it will be the cheapest.

He also questioned the company’s commitment to burn gob piles – massive heaps of waste coal that pollute the landscape.

“What is clear to me in everything I’ve read ... there’s no assurance that any of the biomass or waste coal will ever be used at this plant,” Cortez said. “It’s up to Dominion whether they want to use this fuel.”

Dan Genest, spokesman for Dominion Virginia Power, which is proposing to build the $1.8 billion Virginia City Hybrid Energy Center near St. Paul, Va., said the plant meets and exceeds environmental regulations designed to protect human health and the environment.

“The technology we are using can turn this waste coal into megawatts, and it’s a very low-cost fuel, so the economics are there to make it attractive for us to use this coal to generate electricity,” he said. “We can burn up to 20 percent gob. It’ll be a blend. We’ll use regular coal, gob, and waste wood. And how that will be blended, that hasn’t been determined.”

He said use of waste coal would mean the plant, which is expected to come online in 2012, would make a difference by removing the gob piles from the area.

Genest said while the IGCC technology is “very promising,” it hasn’t been tested on a large scale and would not allow the flexibility to use different fuel types.

“It could burn waste coal or it could burn good coal or it could burn wood,” he said. “But ... in order to do that, you have to design the boiler portion of that to certain specs [specifications], and once those specs are set, that’s basically all it can burn.

“So you can burn waste wood, but you couldn’t burn coal also. So you could burn gob, but you couldn’t burn good coal. So it doesn’t have the flexibility that our plant has. While it would be stuck to one type of fuel, we can use a wide variety of fuels, and that’s what’s available in Southwest Virginia.”

He said the region doesn’t have enough high-quality coal that the industry can “economically extract” to fuel the plant for its expected 50-year life span.

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