In a great demonstration of democracy, members of the Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards and other concerned citizens showed up in opposition to a "resolution of support" of the Wise County Power Plant.
Now its time for our municipalities to pick up the cue and continue passing resolutions AGAINST the power plant. Arlington, Charlottesville, and Blacksburg, as well as Chairman Connelly of Fairfax, have added their voice to growing opposition. Where is Alexandria? Richmond? Harrisonburg?
Here's the story from the Bristol Herald Courier.
The Wise County Board of Supervisors has been unwavering in its backing of a proposed $1.6 billion coal-fired power plant near St. Paul, but the support stumbled briefly Thursday night.A proposed resolution reaffirming the board's support for Dominion Virginia Power's project failed when not a single board member made a move to approve the document the board had seemed poised to adopt just last week in its work session.
Board Chairman Bob Adkins waited about 30 seconds to hear a motion to approve the resolution. When none was heard, he declared the resolution failed.
Let's keep up the good work!
The 800 construction jobs will not go to locals. Dominion will give the construction contract to some large commercial construction company from far away, usually from out of state, that will come in with their own people for the project. They don't want to hire and train up 800 new people from scratch to build one one power plant. That would be incredibly inefficient. They'll use mostly the same people that they used for the last similar project that they built in some other state.
Ditto when they are operating the plant. They'll hire people with relevant degrees and experience from other power plants around the country. Joe Local who got laid off at the coal mine last year is not going to have the resume they are looking for. A couple of lucky locals might get to clean the toilets.
Tax revenue? Maybe for a couple years. Then, even though the plant might be operating for the next 60 or 75 years, because it is a commercial operation, Dominion gets to deduct more 'depreciation' on the taxes for the plant every year. So the tax revenue will go down every year until 10 years from now it won't amount to much of anything at all.
Suckers.
Sooner or later, we'll all be producing our electricity on-site with home fuel cells and Dominion will go belly up. At which point Wise County will be left with an environmental white elephant of an abandoned power plant and find themselves cleaning it up with their own tax dollars.