Dominion Virginia Power is pursuing paths forward that will worsen the Commonwealth's pollution profile, which isn't anything to brag about at this time.
And, they are wrapping their polluting path in an advertising campaign "Sometimes at least part of the answer actually is blowing in the wind."
This ad campaign is emphasizing that the high-voltage power line (and here) that Dominion seeks to carve through northern Virginia is critical for transporting power from the "planned 8,000 acre wind farm near our Mount Storm Power station."
Now the challenge of stranded wind (good wind resources that might be developed except there are not good transmission options to viable markets) is a real one. With better transmission structures through the country, the Midwest's magnificent wind resources might be quickly developed for powering much of the nation. Thus, Dominion is touching on a very real, very serious issue ...
However, nowhere in Dominion's advertising will a reader (rate payer, in my case) pick up that the wind power would use up only a very small share of the proposed transmission line's capacity. That, in fact, the vast majority of that capacity is designed to bring "cheap" coal electricity from Ohio into the Northern Virginia market.
The problem is, of course, that "cheap" doesn't count costs "external" to the contract: like mercury pollution, particulate polluion, CO2 pollution. The "cost" to the nation and the globe is not "cheap".
The Daily Press today called on Governor Tim Kaine to put the brakes on Dirty Dominion. I hope that this is a call that he hears and heeds.
Dominion says it has a deal with the U.S. Forest Service and the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality that would help protect wilderness areas around the plant. The company agreed to cut sulfur dioxide emissions from 3,300 tons a year to 1,684. Sulfur dioxide is the primary culprit in acid rain.The Bristol Herald-Courier, a newspaper rooted in coal country, said this before Tuesday's deal: "[T]he state's Air Pollution Control Board has determined it will be one of the biggest polluters in Virginia. Let us repeat that for emphasis. The Virginia City plant is on course to become one of the biggest polluters in the state."
After the emissions deal, that fact remains true. But that's the nature of coal-fired plants. Even the ones with the lowest emissions - and we have no doubt that Dominion is using the best technology it can find - are dirty things. Halving the emissions of a "clean coal" plant doesn't make it anywhere near clean.
One of the other dirty things that comes out of coal-fired stacks, unfortunately for area fishermen and those of us who enjoy their catch, is mercury, a dangerous and toxic heavy metal. Mercury, much of it from coal-fired plants, has rained so heavily on Hampton Roads that many waterways contain fish that aren't safe to eat.
Which brings us back to green power, which in its highest form produces no acid rain, no smog and no mercury.
The bottom line is that Dominion won't change its ways unless they are forced to do so. That's going to take political pressure, which is in turn going to require the public to speak out. By the way, for everyone in NOVA who thinks this is a problem for other parts of the state, just remember that WE are the largest consumers of Dominion's dirty power. Demand for Dominion's electricity? It "all starts here," in NOVA.