Surry County town weighs impact of proposed coal plant

SURRY

It was a blustery, rainy night in this rural county.

Inside the small high school, clusters of environmentalists, college students and a few other s stood around, talking and debating the pros and cons of a coal-powered energy plant that has been proposed for the outskirts of Dendron.

"To meet the demands we see in the next 15 or 20 years," Jeb Hockman, in charge of public relations for Old Dominion Electric Cooperative, said to a group standing at his table Thursday night, "coal is the most affordable, reliable way of generating electricity. The U.S. is the Saudi Arabia of coal."

The electric co-op has an option on 1,600 acres on the outskirts of Dendron, an incorporated town of about 300 people in central Surry County. The idea is to build the plant and bring coal in from Appalachia.

It could mean a boost to the tax base of the area and provide jobs for up to 200 people once it's built. Old Dominion Electric hopes to start operation by 2016.

Hockman called his cooperative "very environmentally responsible." But Sara Westrate, a state manager for Shoe Carnival who moved to Dendron six years ago to get away from city sprawl, raised her eyebrows. She was listening to another conversation.

There, Bob Richardson, who operates a computer company from a house in James City County and raises chickens for meat, was talking about the environmental risk of coal-powered energy plants with Steven Koch, a pipe fitter who raises rabbits for food and lives within walking distance of the proposed site.

"What are they going to do with the fly ash?" Koch asked. "That's what I want to know."

"I understand they're a very environmentally responsible company," Richardson said. "But the mercury and effluents can travel up to 600 miles. Concern is real."

"I moved here from south Florida because I wanted to live in the country," Westrate said, adding that her concern was the effect on the James River. "The impact goes through the whole state."

Yvonne Pierce, Dendron's mayor since June, said she was concerned that a larger crowd of residents hadn't shown up at the informational meeting, the electric co-op's first.

"This is a community with a lot of older citizens," she said. "They don't come out much at night, especially in this kind of weather."

Pierce, who has worked at the high school for more than 30 years and has been on the Town Council for 14, said the apparent lack of interest makes her responsibility heavier.

"So far, it looks like this company will be good neighbors," she said. "But we have a lot to learn. The plant could establish an identity for Dendron. We've got to make sure we go to the right people with our questions."

Pierce and two other council members went to the cooperative's coal-powered plant at Clover, in Halifax County, a few weeks back. She was impressed.

"It looked like somebody had just gone through with a feather duster, it was so clean," she said. "All of the employees seemed to know what they were supposed to be doing, and they were doing it."

It's not as through Dendron has been such a small town forever, Pierce said. At the turn of the century, it was a busy mill town, home to the Surry Lumber Co., and had a population of about 3,000 people. There were stores, theaters, churches and hotels.

But when the surrounding forests were depleted, the mill began to decline. It closed in the late 1920s.

Pierce finds it interesting that something from so far in the past drew Old Dominion Electric there. The cooperative is looking at the very land that held the mill, which burned down a few years after it closed.

"They say that all of the old railroad beds are still back there," Pierce said. "They took the lumber to the James River and shipped from there."

Coal to fuel the plant would be brought in from western Virginia on the rail line that runs along U.S. 460, said Glen Besa, director of the Virginia chapter of the Sierra Club. He said five coal trains a week would dump into the small town, running along an eight-mile spur from the highway.

"Our primary concern, of course, is global warming," Besa said.

Pierce said the electric co-op intends to sponsor several informational meetings. She hopes residents will get involved.

"I believe this company will do what it says it will do," she said. "But we can't be too careful."

Helen Eggleston, who attended the meeting with her husband, Mike, said their minds are made up.

"Surry is not well known for participating," said Helen Eggleston. "I'm in favor of it because the county needs industrial development and needs the tax base."

Linda McNatt, (757) 222-5561, linda.mcnatt@pilotonline.com