Wise power plant wins approval

BY REX BOWMAN
Media General News Service
WISE — The state yesterday gave Dominion Virginia Power permission to build a $1.8 billion power plant in Wise County but slashed the amount of pollution it would be allowed to emit.
Opponents vowed to go to court to stop construction of the plant, plans for which have engendered one of the most contentious environmental debates in Virginia in the past three years.
Following two days of hearings in Wise, the state Air Pollution Control Board voted 5-0 to give the company the air permit and mercury permit it needs to operate the 585-megawatt coal-fired plant.
However, the permits call for major cuts in the amount of mercury and sulfur dioxide — a source of acid rain — the plant could pump into the air.
The company’s proposal called for about 3,300 tons of sulfur dioxide emissions and 49.5 pounds of mercury per year. The board cut the limit on sulfur dioxide emissions to 603 tons per year and set a maximum limit for mercury emissions of 4.45 pounds per year.
“I think it’s fair to the company and fair to the citizens of the commonwealth,” said board member Hullihen Moore of Richmond. Though Moore and fellow board member Vivian Thomson of Charlottesville seemed more skeptical than other members of the power company’s claims that it had done all it could to reduce emissions, in the end they all said they had done their best to mitigate the environmental and health effects of the plant.
In the hallway of J.J. Kelly High School, where the board held its two-day hearing, Dominion Virginia Power’s chief environmental officer, Pamela Faggert, said the company is pleased with the vote and said construction of the plant will begin next week.
Dominion Virginia Power says the plant is critical to meet the booming demand for energy in Virginia and hopes to have the plant running by 2012. The company anticipates a 4,000-megawatt jump in demand by 2017.
Opponents of the plant, who had collected about 45,000 signatures on a petition to stop its construction, hailed the board’s action as a step in the right direction but said they would continue their battle in court.
“We don’t feel they went quite far enough to comply with the Clean Air Act,” said Sarah Rispin, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center in Charlottesville. “They left 60 hazardous air pollutants virtually out of the permit.”
Opponents contend the plant will not only pollute the air and streams of the region but create greater demand for Virginia coal, leading to more strip mining in the far western corner of the state. Additionally, even under the more stringent permits approved yesterday, the plant would annually emit more than 9,000 tons of pollutants as well as 5.3 million tons of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.
In addition to curtailing sulfur dioxide and mercury emissions, the board amended the permits in several other ways. It voted unanimously to require:
that the plant’s fuel source be made up of 5 percent biomass — wood chips and waste trees, for example — after three years of operation. The company would be required to increase the use of biomass 1 percent every year after that until it hit 10 percent. The use of biomass would cut the amount of sulfur dioxide pouring into the air. The board added a clause that says the company can temporarily reduce or stop using biomass if market conditions make it too costly or if it leads to cutting trees in Southwest Virginia.
that Dominion Virginia Power convert its Bremo Bluff Power Station from coal to natural gas. That would cut a minimum of 300,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually, Faggert said.
Contact Rex Bowman at (540) 344-3612 or .