Friday, March 14, 2008
Editorial: Extending coal's 'cone of death'
Southwest Virginia already pays a high price in coal-generated pollution. Don't add more.
Virginia regulators should not approve a coal-fired electric plant in Wise County. It would become one of the state's largest polluters in a region already choking on emissions from two older coal-burning power plants.
Coal isn't going anywhere. A relatively cheap and abundant source of energy, coal will remain one of the primary sources of electricity for the foreseeable future, despite the environmental problems it causes.
Coal is a major source of carbon dioxide, a prime contributor to global warming. Coal-fired plants belch sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide, mercury and other pollutants that contribute to smog and acid rain, as well as asthma, bronchitis and other ailments.
If it weren't so cheap and abundant, no one would tolerate coal. But that cheapness is an illusion. Many people pay a very high price for this cheap fuel.
If Dominion Power is granted approval for this plant, the people in and around Wise County will pay the highest price.
Already, residents of that area live in what the Harvard School of Public Health terms the "cone of death," where they are at three to four times higher risk of death from pollution-related causes.
The current pollution comes from the Glen Lyn and Clinch River power plants. The proposed Wise County plant would add to that pollution, increasing the size and intensity of the cone of death.
The extraction of coal to fuel the plant is also an environmental disaster, especially with today's preferred mining method: mountaintop removal.
In Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky, thousands of acres of mountains have been flattened and hundreds of miles of streams buried in the pursuit of coal. Dominion's Wise plant would add to that demand.
Dominion has backed off on its claims that the plant will be compatible with carbon-sequestration technology that has yet to be invented, so there is no doubt that this "clean coal" plant would contribute to global warming throughout its lifespan.
Coal isn't going anywhere. But Virginia regulators shouldn't allow Southwest Virginia residents to bear the brunt of the external costs of generating electricity from this dirtiest of fuels.
