PEARISBURG -- The supervisors budged, but not enough to suit the scores of people who'd come to ask for their help.

Since at least September, Giles County residents have been agitating against an Appalachian Power Co. plan to dump 254,000 cubic yards of coal ash on the banks of the New River in Narrows. That would be roughly three years' worth of waste from AEP's Glen Lyn power plant. Piled and compacted, the ash would cover more than 7 acres 30 feet deep.

When that's done, the project's supporters say, the land will be level with U.S. 460 and suitable for development. Opponents say the massive mound of ash, laden with arsenic, lead and other toxins, is a threat to the health of the New River and the people who live along its banks.

The county Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to ask AEP to add a protective liner and test wells to the project and to regularly test the composition of the fly ash.

The liner and wells would be required if this were a landfill holding ash. But this ash would be used as construction fill, which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality classify as "beneficial use" of a waste product.

There was no public discussion of the topic among the supervisors, but their vote was unanimous, except for the abstention of board chairman Howard Spencer.

Spencer is also town manager of Glen Lyn, home to the power plant, and executive director of the Giles County Partnership for Excellence, the nonprofit organization created to support public education in Giles County. The organization is partnering with AEP in this project.

Spencer has said the resulting building site would be used for commercial or industrial development that would generate jobs. Profits from the sale of the site would go to the county's vocational education programs. But Spencer has also said he would be willing to give the site to the right business.

That would undermine the educational purpose of the plan, a concept that is already on shaky ground according to John Robertson, a Blacksburg lawyer hired by the Concerned Citizens of Giles County, a group formed to oppose the project.

Robertson told the supervisors that the partnership and the county School Board may be violating state law.

The school board should be approving any project undertaken by the partnership, Robertson said, if the partnership's soul purpose is to do good works for the benefit of public education in the county.

The board didn't approve the coal ash project. And compacting coal ash on a riverside is difficult to reconcile with the partnership's mission, he said.

Robertson said after the meeting that he's waiting on his clients' instructions before taking any further action. He was retained Monday night, but Robertson said he's already run into problems getting information from the partnership, including tax returns.

A parade of people spoke before and after Robertson, pleading with the board to stop the project, or at least slow it down.

Karita Knisely suggested the county require a police escort for each load of fly ash hauled from Glen Lyn to Narrows -- and require AEP to pay for the escort.

Britt and Leigh Stoudenmire asked the board to pass ordinances supporting the county's comprehensive plan. That would at least create more red tape for such projects, they argued.

But in making the motion the board passed, Supervisor Eric Gentry asserted, "The government of Giles County has no authority to regulate this private site."

Environmental organizer Shireen Parsons made the same point toward a different end at a Concerned Citizens' meeting last week.

"This is not really about fly ash," Parsons said. "This is about who gets to decide what this county looks like and how safe it is. Is it you or is it Mr. Spencer and a handful of AEP executives?"

Parsons, who works with the Citizens Environmental Legal Defense Fund, is championing an ordinance that would, among other things, strip corporations of the right to operate as citizens, as people.

Variations of the ordinance have been passed in communities across the country, but their legality has never been decided in the courts. No Virginia locality has passed such an ordinance.

Citizens for the Preservation of Our Countryside promoted a similar ordinance in Montgomery County in response to Norfolk Southern's plans to build an intermodal freight yard in Elliston, but the county's supervisors refused to pass it.

The Concerned Citizens of Giles County haven't endorsed Parsins' plan, but they haven't rejected it either.

"I think we need to go at this from any angle we can," said Concerned Citizens' member Danny Robertson.