Does Your Power Come from a Blown-Up Mountain?

By: TheGreenMiles
Published On: 11/19/2007 7:24:43 PM

From the Chesapeake Climate Action Network:
This email is causing mountaintop removal - seriously. Using the new tracking program www.ilovemountains.org/myconnection, I was able to search from the sources of coal that is burned in my local power plant.

As I type this email from our office in Richmond, my computer is getting electricity from Dominion-owned Cogentrix of Richmond power plant. I just learned that this power plant burns coal from mountaintop removal mined just across our border in West Virginia. The Potomac River power plant in Alexandria burns coal from a mountaintop removal site in Wise County, Virginia. Where does your coal come from?

The Green Miles is most closely tied to Cogentrix's Birchwood Power plant in Virginia's King George County. According to the site, "This power plant purchases coal directly from Central Appalachian strip mines. Of the Appalachian communities featured on this site, the one most closely connected to this power plant is Bob White, West Virginia."

While states like Colorado prepare for a future in which carbon emissions will be more expensive by adjusting their economic models now, Virginia and Dominion keep chugging along, trying to build another coal-fired power plant. It's almost like they're in an alternate reality set up on the premise that coal will be king forever. I can't help but think that when Congress passes legislation mandating 80% cuts in carbon emissions by 2050, people in Richmond are going to wake up like Neo in The Matrix, hairless and covered in goo. Now if THAT image doesn't get you worried about climate change, I don't know what will!

Comments



Peak Coal in Appalachia (humanfont - 11/19/2007 7:41:40 PM)
Add to this that cheap coal from West Va and SW Va is comming to an end and it just doesn't make sense to add these power plants.  Imagine if instead we built wind farms off the eastern shore and along I-81.  We could also build an extra nuclear plant in SW VA to offset the coal industry that they are about to lose.


Earth First! (HisRoc - 11/19/2007 8:11:25 PM)
We'll Loot the Rest of the Planets Later.

Seriously, if you think that this is an issue that only affects rural West Virginia, then go outside and take a deep breath of air.

Several years ago, I was astonished to see a photo in the Skyline Drive Visitors Center at Skytop, about 3,000 feet above sea level.  It was a daytime B&W photo taken in the early 1960's from Skytop looking east.  You could see the Washington Monument in the distance, about 65 miles away.  Today, on a clear day you can barely make out features less than one-third of that distance.  We have got to stop burning fossil fuel to produce electricity.