Tag: Dominion
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Duke Study Documents Coal Ash Leakage into Groundwater
by James A. Bacon New tests and analysis conducted by Duke University add to the body of evidence indicating that heavy metals in coal ash ponds leach into the water and and make their way into surrounding water, sometimes in excess of federal standards for drinking water and aquatic life. The researchers sampled surface water…
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Haymarket Project More than Amazon’s “Extension Cord,” Dominion Says
Dominion Virginia Power would have to upgrade its electricity distribution system to the Haymarket area of Prince William County sooner or later, even without the development of a data-center campus, testified Mark R. Gill, an electric transmission planning engineer with Dominion, in State Corporation Commission testimony filed yesterday. “Without the request for service to the Haymarket…
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Coal Ash, Parts Per Billion, and Risk
Kudos to Robert Zullo with the Richmond Times-Dispatch for digging beneath the dueling press releases to shed light on the contamination risks that coal ash ponds pose to drinking water. Focusing on the carcinogenic chemical hexavalent chromium, which has been detected in well water near Dominion Virginia Power’s Possum Point Power Station, he broaches key questions: How much…
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Who Should Pay for Haymarket Transmission Project, Amazon or Ratepayers?
by James A. Bacon Dominion Virginia Power wants to upgrade its electric grid to serve a new data center campus in the Haymarket area of Prince William County. Residents are up in arms about the potential loss to property values, and the cost of the project could range between $51 million for the least expensive alternative…
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Doubling Down on Natural Gas
Dominion says its new Brunswick County Power Station is clean, super-efficient, and a good deal for rate payers. Environmentalists question whether the natural gas-fired facility is a wise investment over the long run. by James A. Bacon Dominion Virginia Power’s new $1.2 billion gas-fired power plant in Brunswick County is state-of-the-art. Three of the most…
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New Gas-Fired Power Station Brings Hope to Brunswick County
by James A. Bacon To Joan Moore, executive director of the Brunswick County Industrial Development Authority (IDA), the opening of the $1.2 billion Brunswick County Power Station means more than the thousand construction jobs that pumped money into the local economy for a year, more than the 40 permanent operating jobs, and even more than…
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Enviros Hail Proposed Regs for Greensville Plant
Environmental groups are cheering tough new restrictions in the draft air permit for Dominion Virginia Power’s proposed natural gas-fired power plant in Greensville County. If approved by the state Air Pollution Control Board, the regulations would tighten protective standards for carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, methane, and particulate matter. Dominion also would have to conduct…
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Swapping Easements
by James A. Bacon Dominion Transmission, managing partner of the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline, has proposed to donate two parcels totaling nearly 1,200 acres to offset the intrusion of its proposed 600-mile pipeline onto lands protected by conservation easements. In a proposal made to the Virginia Outdoor Foundation (VOF), which holds the conservation easements, Dominion would…
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Justifiable Jitters or Unwarranted Worry?
Virginians living in the path of the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline fret about the threat of explosions. Dominion Transmission says their fears are overblown. by James A. Bacon Irene Leech, a consumer studies professor at Virginia Tech, grew up on a farm in Buckingham County where her family has raised beef for more than a hundred years.…
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Watch Those Utility Poles!
Odd fact of the day: Last year some 2,000 vehicle accidents across Virginia involved utility poles — more than five accidents per day on average, according to Dominion Virginia Power. How should you react if you struck a pole and electric wires fell onto the car? Let’s just say the life-saving response is not intuitive.…
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Next Front in the Coal Ash War: Groundwater Testing
by James A. Bacon Brian West, whose property backs up the Dominion Virginia Power’s coal ash ponds at the Possum Point Power Station, has had his well water tested three times in the past few months. He got three very different results, leaving him wondering how safe the water is to drink. The first test, conducted…
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Nuke Foes Take Case to Dominion Shareholders
by James A. Bacon Foes of a third nuclear power plan at Dominion Virginia Power’s North Anna Power Station have taken their case to the shareholders of parent company Dominion Resources, which is holding its annual shareholders meeting in Columbia, S.C., today. Dominion is racking up billions of dollars of potential liabilities on the nuclear unit…
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NRDC Blasts Dominion’s $13 Billion Cost Projection
by James A. Bacon The 15-year planning document filed by Dominion Virginia Power last week vastly overstates the cost of complying with the Clean Power Plan and is chock-full of errors, flaws and misjudgments, charged Walton Shepherd, staff attorney for the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and a member of a committee of stakeholders advising…
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Why Dominion Sees Growing Electricity Demand in the 15-Year Future
by James A. Bacon One of the more controversial forecasts contained in Dominion Virginia Power’s 2016 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) is a projection that average electricity demand and peak demand in its service territory will increase at an annual rate of 1.5% annually over the next 15 years. If that forecast pans out, demand will outstrip the…
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Strictest Clean Power Option Would Cost Customers $12.8 Billion, Dominion Says
by James A. Bacon Meeting the strictest compliance option of the Clean Power Plan would cost customers of Dominion Virginia Power an estimated $12.8 billion in higher electric rates over the next 30 years, the power company revealed in its 2016 Integrated Resource Plan, which it submitted to the State Corporation Commission (SCC) today. Three lower-cost…