Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Dominion plant would be bad for Wise
From the RoundTable blog
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Joan Kark
Kark lives on Guinea Mountain in Giles County.
The commentary "Coal plant would be environmental boon" (Jan. 16) by Walt Crickmer contained many misleading facts regarding the proposed Dominion power plant in Wise County.
Crickmer stated that the plant is designed to burn coal waste, known as gob piles, which are byproducts of coal mining in Southwest Virginia. However, instead of millions of tons of coal waste being cleaned up, the burning of gob piles will result in harm to the environment and the local community. The reasons relate to the gob piles themselves.
Gob piles have less energy or only one-fifth of the BTUs (British Thermal Units) as coal, according to evidence compiled for the Greene Energy power plant litigation in Pennsylvania. As a result, the power plant will leave coal combustion waste, or coal fly ash equal, to 60 percent to 80 percent of the original gob pile.
A gob pile turned into a coal fly ash pile is a bad trade-off. Coal fly ash contains a heavier concentration of metals and other chemicals (i.e. selenium, arsenic) that can leach into water supplies. The disposal or use of coal fly ash may become very expensive because EPA is considering new regulations regarding waste disposal.
Digging up the gob piles may leach the heavy metals into rivers so the piles might be better left alone. Further, transporting the gob in trucks to the power plant will inundate local communities with dust and noise. The coalfield communities already have a major problem with trucks hauling coal, so transfer of gob piles will only add to the existing dust and noise problems. The use of coal waste in a power plant is not good for the environment or the local community.
Crickmer wrote, "The initial fuel design for the plant also allows for burning 20 percent wood," which could include wood byproducts. In addition, he proposes that Dominion will add expensive turbines to burn natural gas. Both these scenarios sound more like ways to disguise what really will be burned in the proposed plant.
Rather than gas or wood, the proposed power plant for Wise County will burn coal -- and by law be required to burn Virginia coal. As a result, most of this coal will come from surrounding mountaintop removal coal mines. This type of coal mining has destroyed more than 470 mountains and buried more than 1,200 miles of streams in the southern Appalachians according to Appalachian Voices. One-third of Wise County has been strip-mined already. The power plant will only accelerate this environmentally destructive practice.
The plant will produce the maximum amount of air pollution allowable by current law, a fact that Crickmer fails to mention. The Dominion power plant "would rank among the top 10 worst polluters in Virginia, pumping up to 12,500 tons of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and other pollutants into the air every year," according to Appalachian Voices.
In addition to pollutants, the proposed plant will emit 5.3 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, resulting in a significant contribution to global warming. I calculated that this is the equivalent of adding more than 1.35 million cars to the road. So, this coal plant will add a massive amount to our country's carbon emissions -- not the direction the American people want to go.
Lawmakers are poised to pass legislation that will tax or institute a cap-and-trade system to reduce carbon emissions. And the next president, whether Democratic or Republican, is likely to sign the bill.
Given these political developments, three major investment banks -- CitiBank, J.P. Morgan Chase and Morgan Stanley -- are balking at financing coal plants unless power companies can show how they can pay under the cap-and-trade system, according to The Wall Street Journal.
If investors do not want to take the risk of financing coalplants, why should Virginia take the risk of permitting them?
The economic benefits Crickmer discusses are suspect as well. The plant will employ 100 people, which calculates to be 125 tons of pollutants and 54,000 tons of carbon emissions per employee per year. This pollution may result in more people leaving the area than might be employed by the plant. Providing incentives for nonpolluting, low carbon emissions industries or tourism would be far more beneficial to the local economy.
Electricity is critical for economic development, but coal is not. Virginians should demand that power companies use renewable, nonpolluting energy sources to generate electricity. Virginia could encourage these companies to do so by not permitting the proposed coal-fired plant in Wise County.
