Power plant closer to reality

BY DEBRA McCOWN
Media General News Service
Published: June 30, 2008

WISE – The Virginia City Hybrid Energy Center will move swiftly toward construction, officials said Wednesday after the state Air Pollution Control Board approved permits for the 585-megawatt, coal-fired power plant.

Mike Dowd, director of the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality’s air division, said he expects the agency to issue the permits “in the next few days.”

The approval came with a long list of amendments that ratchet-down emissions limits and require other conditions for the plant’s operation.

“Dominion is very pleased that the Virginia State Air Pollution Control Board has issued the PSD permit and the MACT permit for the Virginia City Hybrid Energy Center today,” said Pam Faggert, vice president and chief environmental officer for Dominion Virginia Power. “We look forward to receiving the permit early next week and having an opportunity to take a look at it. Most importantly, it paves the way for us to begin construction next week.”

MACT is an acronym for Maximum Achievable Control Technology and PSD is Prevention of Significant Deterioration. Both are required for the plant to comply with air quality regulations under the federal Clean Air Act.

Environmental challenge
Environmental activists, while commending the board’s work to reduce pollution limits for the proposed plant, say the limits aren’t stringent enough – and they plan to mount a legal challenge to the issuance of the permits.

“We’re going to argue that the permit, as issued, is deficient under the law and needs to be remanded to the DEQ and the air board for further consideration,” said Sarah Rispin, a staff attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center.

“We’re going to be asking that the permit ... is made more stringent with respect to mercury and with respect to other hazardous air pollutants,” Rispin continued. “We’re also going to ask that they require the use of cleaner fuels ... and consider switching to more advanced coal-burning technology that will be
compatible with carbon sequestration in the future should that technology becoming available.”

The group also has a pending legal challenge to the State Corporation Commission’s decision to allow construction of the plant.

Kathy Selvage, vice president of Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards, based in Appalachia, Va., said the SELC will be representing four other environmental organizations as well in the lawsuit against Dominion and the DEQ on the issuance of the air permit.

“In all actuality, we shouldn’t be building any coal-fired power plants,” Selvage said. “And yet ... if they were going to approve the permits, I’m ecstatically happy that the limits were lowered as much as they were, but they still didn’t go far enough. They didn’t go far enough to comply with the law, I do not believe.”

‘Public-participation process’
David Paylor, director of DEQ, said air board members listened to extensive comments from the public.

“Obviously the public was heard on what they said,” Paylor said. “I think this is an example of the public-participation process working well.”

The board added eight amendments to the draft permits: five lowering emissions limits, two regulating the fuels used and one requiring the transition of another Dominion power plant to natural gas.

Board Member Bruce Buckheit said he hoped, by tightening pollution control numbers, “to reduce litigation and make this permit as lawful as possible.”

“Yes, the controls that Dominion is proposing, I believe, can meet these limits while burning waste coal and run of the mine coal and Gob,” Buckheit said.

He said failure to permit the plant on the basis of carbon-dioxide emissions would have been counter-productive to meaningful climate change legislation.

“We need power in this country, and if we start having brownouts, we will quickly lose any political support we will have to get effective carbon legislation,” Buckheit said. “The political consensus isn’t there yet in the country. We have to work to build that consensus.”

Air Board Chairman Richard Langford said the approval for the power plant – the first to be constructed in Virginia in more than a decade – will set standards for future coal-fired plants to fuel the state’s energy needs.

“We’ve heard several times that this plant will have the best suite of controls ever built ... in the U.S. and maybe anywhere,” Langford said. “We have great energy needs ... and I think given the vast coal reserves that the United States and particularly Virginia has, that it is a good decision to utilize those coal
reserves to generate electricity.”