Coal-fired power plant approved for Appalachia

A dozen people were arrested on June 30 for blockading the entrance to Dominion Resources' corporate headquarters to protest the company's plan for a new coal-fired power plant in Southwest Virginia. The protest blocked a street for more than two hours, with four college students forming a human chain with their hands encased in containers of hardened cement and a fifth dangling by a climber's harness from a footbridge. The protesters, all arrested on various misdemeanor charges, were part of a contingent of more than 20 people from Blue Ridge Earth First! who launched the blockade to protest a decision by Virginia's Air Pollution Control Board to approve pollution permits for a 585-megawatt power plant in Wise County. "We've been through the regulatory process–it's time to take action on our own," said Hannah Morgan, a 19-year-old resident of Appalachia, a town in Wise, who acted as spokeswoman for the protest. Morgan said each protester was charged with obstruction of justice and interference with an emergency vehicle. Dominion employees were forced to walk to work after their vehicles were caught in a traffic jam that was a result of the blockade. Blue Ridge Earth First!, along with another group called Mountain Justice, say the proposed $1.8 billion plant would emit too much mercury and carbon dioxide into the air, promote strip mining for coal in Southwest Virginia and cost consumers too much for electricity. They also protested Dominion's possible plans to build a third nuclear reactor at its North Anna power plant in Louisa County. On June 25, the No 2 utility owner in the US won the right to build the power plant in the heart of the Appalachian mountains. The move almost certainly will increase Virginia's use of the mining practice known as mountaintop removal, in which peaks are sheared off to reach the coal inside. After an emotional two-day hearing that drew hundreds of witnesses, the plant was approved. The vote was unanimous, with even board members who favor a carbon tax calling for more coal to burn. "We need more power in this country... and if we get brownouts, we will quickly lose support for carbon controls," pollution control board member Bruce Buckheit told the Times-News of rural Kingsport, Tennessee. The defeat of more than 15 proposed US coal plants in 2006 and 2007, a victory for grassroots activists, was followed four months ago by a breakthrough on Wall Street when investment banks set strict new financing standards for the construction of new power stations. But reports of Big Coal's imminent demise may be exaggerated. In addition to the Dominion plant -- which would add the carbon equivalent of an estimated 900,000 new cars to Virginia roads -- the state of Arkansas is moving forward with a $1.3 billion plant that is twice the size. The pollution control board imposed conditions on the new Virginia plant that were far stronger than Dominion wanted: its preferred sulfur emissions cap was sliced by 80%, its mercury emissions cap by about 90%. "We have not yet had the opportunity to review the final permits, but this decision paves the way for us to start construction in the very near future," the power company said in a statement. To secure the backing of local officials, Dominion vowed to burn only Virginia-harvested coal at the new plant. That promise likely would increase mountaintop removal. The toxic runoff from mountaintop removal is then dumped into Appalachian communities, a tactic called "valley fill" that carries fatal consequences for lands, waters, species and human health. Mountaintop mining rules now being finalized by the Bush administration are so lax that one conservative senator questioned their legality last week. "The end result is a proposal for the outright exemption of valley fills from [existing environmental law]," Republican senator Lamar Alexander wrote to US government auditors, asking for an independent analysis of the issue. Yet the debate over the Dominion plant reaches beyond mountaintop removal to the very future of climate activism in the US. The tension between environmental consciousness and energy appetites in the US has provided coal companies with a political opening. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, who represents the coal-producing state of Illinois, has embraced the potential for "clean coal," which most in the green movement deride as a fantasy. Dominion boasted a crucial ally in Virginia governor Tim Kaine, a Democratic politician who dashed the hopes of activists by backing the power company. Renowned climate scientist James Hansen, who called this week to ban future coal-fired power plants, personally wrote to Kaine asking him to rethink his stance. Yet the relentless pull of US energy demands proved more politically powerful than even the economic costs of the new plant.