The Old Dominion is facing two new environmental threats. Battle lines are being drawn regarding a proposed coal-fired electricity plant in Surry County. And pharma giant Merck wants permission to dump several times the levels of allowable pollutants into the Shenandoah River.
The new issues come just after Dominion Power has begun contruction of a highly-controversial $1.8 billion, 585-megawatt coal-fired plant in St. Paul in Wise County. The project was supported by Gov. Tim Kaine although his own Commission on Global Change has set a goal of reducing greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, by 80 percent by 2050. Kaine has never squared that contradiction.
Now, an entirely new project is being proposed By Old Dominion Electric Cooperative, a $6 billion coal-fired plant capable of producing up to 1,500 megawatts of electricity. The project would be located in Surry County in the town of Dendron about 40 miles west of Norfolk.
If it proceeds, a plant up to triple the size of Dominion’s Wise County operation would be built close to tributaries of the James River and Chesapeake Bay and their sensitive crab and oyster spanning grounds. Its air pollution would be a matter of a few miles from Colonial Williamsburg and near one of the state’s most densely populated areas in Greater Tidewater. It would be close to Dominion’s two nuclear reactors at Surry.
According to The Virginian-Pilot, the plant has drawn pledges of “all out war” from environmental groups including the Sierra Club, the Southern Envionrmental Law Center and the Chesapeake Climate Action Network.
Since it is located not far from Norfolk Southern’s railroad mainline from the Appalachian coalfields to loading docks at Lambert’s Point in Norfolk, the plant, called the Cypress Creek Power Station, would have no trouble finding coal supplies. About three percent of its fuel would come from biomass.
Yet details of the plant are few. It does not appear that it would involve any advanced, clean-coal technologies designed to trap carbon dioxide and keep more nitrogen, phosphorous and sulfur pollution out of the air. Dominion’s Wise County plant does not offer advanced “clean coal” technology, either.
Meanwhile, Merck, a $24 billion pharmaceutical maker based in New Jersey, wants to be allowed to emit twice the amount of phosphorous and three times as much nitrogen as allowed by the Department of Environmental Quality at a plant in Elkton near the Shenandoah River. (Click here for details.) Those pollutants will flow into the Potomac River and eventually the Chesapeake Bay.
The takeaway: Virginia prides itself on being “business friendly,” with its anti-labor, anti-environmentalist stances. Yet, the Surry coal plant could be three times the size of the hotly-contested Wise County plant and it is much closer to large, populated areas, not to mention sensitive marine life. It amazes that the plant has gotten little attention outside ot The VirginianPilot and especially not in the Richmond area where Old Dominion Electric is based.
Even Tim Kaine talks out of both sides of his mouth when it comes to global warming. But how much longer is Big Business going to be allowed to have its way with the state’s air and water?
Peter Galuszka
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