Must Read LTEs from Surry Area Residents

Another Great LTE in the Gazette (0.00 / 0)

Power station pitfalls

I attended the first air permit review for the proposed 1.5 GW coal power station at Dendron, Surry County, last week. As Helen Cooke Eggleston noted in her essay (March 25 Gazette), we in the Williamsburg area will be the recipients of most of the pollutants from their tall stack, and yet receive none of the benefits, if any, as we live downwind of the proposed station.

I was very concerned about the cavalier attitude of the Old Dominion Electric Cooperative staff to the huge emissions of CO2, 1.46 million ton/year or 40,000 tons every day (their number). Even though the Supreme Court in 2007 decided that CO2 is a pollutant under the Clean Air Act, ODEC has decided to ignore this fact because the EPA has not gotten around to publishing regulations for CO2.

ODEC staff members even claimed that their proposed station was still cheaper than alternatives if they have to pay a carbon tax. They also acknowledged in conversations that if they were forced by the government to capture and sequester CO2, the most likely location from a geologic point of view would be the far southwest corner of the state. That is almost 400 miles away. Does it make any sense to build such a plant in Surry County if 40,000 tons a day of CO2 have to be piped nearly 400 miles?

It is also particularly ironic that the second biggest emitter of CO2 in the state should be located close to Hampton Roads, where climate change induced sea level rise is bound to cause serious disruptions to our way of life. In fact, most of Hampton goes underwater for a sea level rise of 3 feet.

So, in addition to all the short-term problems listed by Eggleston, this plant has the capacity over its likely 50-year life to be a major player in the complete disruption of Hampton Roads and the Chesapeake Bay.

M. Robin Church
James City

Eileen Levandoski, Hampton Roads Conservation Coordinator, Sierra Club, Virginia Chapter

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by: Eileen @ Tue Mar 31, 2009 at 09:46:45 AM CDT

oops (0.00 / 0)

The article said 1.46 million tons, but at the meeting several people including myself heard 14.6 million.  Is this a typo or a mispeak by ODEC?

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by: ClimateJess @ Tue Mar 31, 2009 at 11:02:55 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Also, to the residents (0.00 / 0)

I also wanted to say THANK YOU for speaking out, and Eileen for making this known.  I encourage everyone to additionally write to the RTD, Daily Press, and Pilot as well---the plant is not very far, and unfortunately big city articles would be more likely to be read by the decision makers outside of Surry.

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by: ClimateJess @ Tue Mar 31, 2009 at 11:07:46 AM CDT

Coal Fired Hell (0.00 / 0)

Coal Fired Hell

Coops are supposed to be non-profits.  That means they are not supposed to show a profit.  So why when a company is presented with a safer alternative that doesn't have quite as much profit margin in the Dendron Power Plant project do they not even consider it.  Not on your life.  So why a non-profit would not consider a safer alternative such as a combined cycle coal gasification plant driving gas and steam turbines escapes me.    I think what it boiled down to was the profit motive.
The Dendron ODEC power plant will be approximately 3.05 miles from the schools at Elberon.  Wikipedia under fossil fuel plants says that a 1000 megawatt coal burning power plant could release as much as5.2 tons/year of uranium (containing 74 pounds (34kg) of uranium 235 and 12.8 tons of thorium.  The radioactive emission from this coal fired power plant is 100 times greater than a comparable nuclear power plant with the same electrical output; including processing output, the coal power plant's radiation output is over three times greater.  This plant will be a third larger than this.  Remember clover which ODEC owns a fifty per cent share of.  Well they promised to add more pollution control equipment when threatened with a large fine.  We want the best technology money can buy not the same old slobbering filthy dirty coal power plants.  Non-polluting is pipe dreams just ask the residents in Chesapeake who lived around a golf course where fly ash was used.  They can no longer use their wells because the arsenic level in them is eight times normal.
The coal industry uses the term "clean coal" to describe experimental technologies designed  to enhance both the efficiency and the environmental acceptability of coal extraction, preparation, and use, but has provided no specific quantitative limits on any emissions, particularly carbon dioxide.  As of the end of 2008, there were no operating "clean coal'(CCS) commercial power plants in existence.  Natural gas is a cleaner fossil fuel than coal since its combustion does not emit sulfur dioxide, particulate matter or radioactive materials.
When you look at it from all angles a nuclear power plant would be less damaging and less hazardous than what ODEC is proposing.  Do you want your school children breathing in these radioactive elements at three times what their exposure would be elsewhere?  With a 600 foot tall stack and the prevailing winds Smithfield, Williamsburg, Newport news and the Eastern shore would probably get a healthy dose of it because they have no solid data  only data obtained from modeling.  They get their data the same way the weather bureau does, modeling.  Remember the tornado in Suffolk no one saw coming.  All of the county supervisors from surrounding areas need to think long and hard about what this power plant is going to expose the school children of Southeastern Virginia and your counties to.  Is coal ash going to be the asbestos of tomorrow?  What a legacy to leave your children.

Surry County Resident
Mike Eggleston

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by: iwire4you @ Thu Apr 02, 2009 at 16:26:32 PM CDT