Air Board Members Are Listening Before Deciding On Power Plant Permits

By Debra McCown
Reporter / Bristol Herald Courier
Published: June 25, 2008

WISE, Va. – Local elected officials presented a united front to the state Air Pollution Control Board on Tuesday in favor of the 585-megawatt power plant planned for Wise County.

Representatives of local coal companies also voiced support for the $1.8 billion Virginia City Hybrid Energy Center proposed by Dominion Virginia Power, which has already begun extensive site work outside St. Paul.

The air board is the final regulatory hurdle for the project, and board members heard comments from the public on Tuesday’s first day of their meeting here.

The overwhelming message from supporters was simple: approve the permit, and approve it during the meeting.

“Make a decision tomorrow,” Delegate Bud Phillips said Tuesday, adding that every delegate and senator from the region backs the project.

“Vote it up or down and then give us your reasons for doing that,” Phillips continued. “If the Dominion permit ... complies with the law, then that permit should be granted.”

Delegates Dan Bowling and Terry Kilgore said the proposed Virginia City Hybrid Energy Center would be the cleanest-burning, coal-fired plant in the nation.

“We have an opportunity there that we’re going to be setting the standards here issuing a permit, the standards that the nation will follow,” Kilgore said. “Virginia will be a leader in clean-coal technology.”
Today the board will hear presentations from Dominion and from the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality before deliberating and possibly deciding on permits for the project.

Some of those who spoke agreed with state and local officials, who all spoke at the beginning of Tuesday’s meeting, in their comments; others disagreed, saying the officials don’t speak for them.

“The promises Dominion has made are just as much hot air as is currently blowing out of [an existing power plant at] Carbo,” said Bill McCabe, an environmental activist. “All you have to do to see how that went is fly over Wise County or drive up the [strip-mined] Virginia side of Black Mountain.”

As speakers alternated between those in favor and those opposed, both sides tried to hash out the meaning of heritage, health, prosperity and the Clean Air Act.

“I’m really proud of the fact that we’ve got a company like Dominion that is willing to locate in Southwest Virginia and use a product that is basically the daddy of everything that we’ve got,” said Donnie Rife, chairman of the Dickenson County Board of Supervisors. “Either directly or indirectly, coal is Southwest Virginia. Coal is the Appalachians. It has provided more revenue for roads in this area than anything I can think of.”

Rife said fast-food companies will kill more people – and create more pollution – in the next 70 years than the proposed power plant.

Jaculyn Hanrahan, of Coeburn, disagreed.

“Our heritage is not only a coal heritage,” she said “We have paid the coal-heritage piper for long enough, and that pied piper has taken away our children – either in the middle of the night by a rock fall or in broad daylight when our children come of age – from their exodus from our communities that do not offer them sustainable jobs or quality of life, or worse still to addictions to their drug of choice.

“How little will you give me for 300-million-year-old mountain ranges ... who are we in Wise County or the State of Virginia to think that it is ours to give away? Our heritage is our people who live here, our forests our mountains our rivers our streams ... our broader heritage of the oldest mountains in the world.”

Environmental issues also had proponents on both sides of the project.

Those in favor said the plant will enable the cleanup of massive piles of waste coal and the electricity produced is a better alternative than homes heated with individual coal stoves.

Those opposed said air pollution from the plant and added mining to fuel it will threaten the health and safety of themselves and future generations.

“It’s about the people in these communities who are held hostage in their own homes. They can’t sit on the porch because of the dust [from mining],” said Larry Bush, of Wise County. “People are actually abandoning their homes because of the filth in the air.”

Wise County Supervisor Robby Robinson said coal-fired power plants have actually improved the region’s air quality in his lifetime.

“As a boy growing up, I saw coke ovens, steam engines and all the houses around fired by coal. I would wake up in the morning and there would be a blue haze in the valleys,” Robinson said. “I don’t see that blue haze today. A lot of that is due to the fact that we use electricity as a source of energy instead of coal.

“If we went back to those days when everyone had to heat their homes with coal stoves, we would be billowing out all sorts of pollution into the air. This type of pollution would not be controlled nor could it be controlled. But you have a company such as a power company that can control the emissions. That is great because that really saves the environment more than any other means you have available.”
Walt Crickmer, who works with remediation of waste sites, said the removal of gob piles to fuel the plant will benefit the environment.

“The problem is these hundred millions of tons of coal waste piles exist in Southwest Virginia that contribute the number one contamination source for all our watershed ... and has been doing so for 100 years,” Crickmer said.  “The plant that Dominion’s proposing to build is really our first opportunity to clean up these watersheds, and it’s very important for us in Southwest Virginia that these watersheds get cleaned up.”

Amanda Hurowitz, a schoolteacher from Northern Virginia, said her students were shocked at the proposed project.

“Most of my students were in shock when they heard that Virginia is in the process of building a new coal-fired power plant, literally shocked. Mouths open, jaws drop,” Hurowitz said, adding that her students raised more than $35,000 to install solar panels on the roof of the school. “Dominion should follow the example of these teenagers and invest the $1.8 billion [for the proposed plant] in renewable energy.”

John Cruikshank asked the air board to prevent construction of the plant “for the sake of the children.”

“When I began teaching in 1972, autism was extremely rare. Today one in every 160 American children is identified as autistic,” Cruikshank said. 

“Those who want to build a new coal plant in Virginia should spend just one day in an elementary school nurse’s office,” he continued. “Come and see the growing number of inhalers stored in the medicine cabinet. Watch the children struggle to breathe air into their lungs until the mist from an inhaler takes effect, a treatment that itself has serious side effects.”

Mark Wooten, of Wise County, questioned the claims of adverse health effects from power plants.

“Please show me one documented case where a person has suffered health problems from a coal-fired power plant ... there is no direct evidence,” Wooten said.

He said opposition to the plant is “truly fueled by hatred of capitalism, industry and progress.”

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