Virginia Coal Plant Wins Approval Over CBF Opposition

Coal Plant Receives Local Approval for Second Time

Despite many people speaking out in opposition, Dendron’s town council again voted to approve a rezoning that will allow a large coal-fired power plant to be built in the town about 20 miles outside Williamsburg. Old Dominion Electric Cooperative has plans to build a $6 billion, 1,500-megawatt power plant, and received local approvals for zoning and land use changes from the town of Dendron in 2010. A judge recently found that the public hearing on the vote wasn’t properly advertised, so ODEC had to go through the approval process a second time. ODEC received approval for a second time from the county’s planning department last week, and then the council voted at its meeting Monday night to again approve the application.
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The Chesapeake Bay Foundation also issued a statement about Monday’s vote, calling it “another unfortunate step toward a facility that threatens to harm the health of citizens, the quality of our local rivers, the Chesapeake Bay, the air we breathe, and the region’s economy.

The last I heard, CBF facilities (mostly in the Annapolis area) were still using electric power, and unless they are producing their own power from unicorn farts, the power they pull of the grid in our area is predominantly  produced in coal-fired plants (Hey, I wish it was nuclear, but you can't always get what you want).  If I could wave a wand and deprive CBF of electricity until they get their unicorn fart generators running I would.

Modern coal fired power plants have come a long way in the past several years, as a result of more stringent standards for air and water emissions.  Ironically the technology used to produce these advances, scrubbers and selective catalytic reduction (SCR) systems capture the toxins that used to go into the air (NOX, SO3 and Hg) in the solid wastes, and significantly increased the volume and toxicity of the solid wastes.  However, these are local problems, handled on site or a disposal facilities.  The new sites are vast improvements over the old one, and with the Obam administration effectively forcing older plants close, precisely for their environmental problems, it is critical that new plants be established.

NIMBY just doesn't cut it, especially when you claim the whole world as your backyard.

While