Activists pledge 'all-out war' to block power plant

Environmentalists are vowing to block a proposed $6 billion coal-fired power plant in Surry County, saying it would increase air pollution, would contribute to global warming and is not needed.

Advocacy groups including the Sierra Club, Southern Environmental Law Center and Chesapeake Climate Action Network are gearing up for what one activist called "all-out war" in response to plans announced this week by the project sponsor, Old Dominion Electric Cooperative.

ODEC, a nonprofit utility based in Richmond, said it wants to build the plant on about 1,600 acres in the town of Dendron, about 40 miles west of Norfolk, in order to meet anticipated demand for electricity in the near future in Virginia, Maryland and Delaware.

The utility has given the plant a name - Cypress Creek Power Station - and said it would burn mostly Appalachian coal to produce 750 megawatts to 1,500 megawatts of electricity, enough to power about 400,000 homes. Woody timber wastes, known as biomass, would fuel about 3 percent of the plant.

In comparison, the coal-fired plant under construction in Wise County in Southwest Virginia is expected to produce 585 megawatts and cost about $1.8 billion. That project, led by Dominion Virginia Power, is being challenged in court by environmentalists.

"In the face of an economic recession and mounting threats from climate change, the prospect of introducing an unnecessary $6 billion coal plant is outrageous," said Tom Cormons, a lawyer and campaign coordinator for Appalachian Voices, a group fighting the Wise County plant as well.

Jeb Hockman, an ODEC spokesman, said the utility expects opposition from environmentalists and understands their concerns, but he stressed that the plant would be built with sophisticated controls to greatly curb emissions such as mercury, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, which causes smog.

"We're not against any of these groups," Hockman said. "We're willing to listen to them, work with them, to make a better project."

Carbon emissions linked to global warming would be captured and stored underground once such technology is developed, he said. Officials estimate the technology, known as carbon sequestration, will not be ready commercially until at least 2020.

ODEC announced its plans the same week that the Governor's Commission on Climate Change made final more than 100 recommendations for combat ing global warming in Virginia. Chief among them is reducing greenhouse gases - most notably carbon dioxide - by 80 percent by 2050.

The commission chairman, L. Preston Bryant, who also is Gov. Timothy M. Kaine's secretary of natural resources, said he knew little about the ODEC plant and that its projected emissions were not part of the panel's calculations.

Noting that coal will continue to be an energy source in Virginia and the rest of the world for decades to come, Bryant said, "We very much want coal to be an increasingly smaller and cleaner part of our energy supply.

"I personally look forward to hearing what advanced technologies are being proposed for this plant," he added.

Hockman said ODEC's board of directors has not yet decided yet to build the plant, which is estimated to cost

$3 billion to $4 billion but could go as high as $6 billion.

The board selected Surry County as its preferred site after reviewing other locations throughout the mid-Atlantic. The utility also is interested in a site in neighboring Sussex County and will continue to consider it as a Plan B option, he said.

It could take four to six years to build the plant, providing up to 2,200 jobs, Hockman said. ODEC hopes to start operations by 2016, with between 150 and 200 employees running the station.

Hockman said the utility has sent letters to all residents of Dendron inviting them to an informational meeting from 5:30 to 8 p.m. Thursday at the local high school. The meeting is open to the public.

ODEC has not applied for permits from the State Corporation Commission or the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, though Hockman said those applications will be delivered soon.

The utility has sat down with state environmental regulators in a "pre-application meeting" to discuss the complex process ahead, said Bill Hayden, a DEQ spokesman.

ODEC generates and transmits wholesale electricity to nearly 1.3 million people in three states. It owns 11.6 percent of the North Anna nuclear power station outside of Richmond and 50 percent of the Clover power station in Halifax County in Southside Virginia.

Before choosing coal for the Surry location, Hockman said, the utility also considered its own nuclear facility, as well as one fueled by natural gas. But both options proved too expensive and unwieldy.

"We're like the Saudi Arabia of coal," he said of America's reserves. "It's reliable, consistent, still fairly inexpensive, and we think we can handle it in an environmentally sensitive way."

Scott Harper, (757) 446-2340, scott.harper@pilotonline.com