Vote this up here!

what was accomplished.  But 42,000 people is not a large number when you look at the size of Dominion Virginia Power's service territory and the number of customers it contains.  According to their SEC filings, that is about 2% of their customer accounts for distribution service, which total 2.4 million.

Maybe if you got $100 from each of the signers, then you would have $4.2 million to run a statewide ad campaign against the coal plant.  I don't know how much an ad blitz in the state would cost.  But several million should be getting you pretty close.  Something like this.  Otherwise, how do you get enough public outcry that Governor Kaine, state legislators, and Dominion pay attention?

42,000 is not bad, but we need a lot more people focused on this issue...

This isn't like the abusive driver fees petition which affected all Virginians.  While the Wise County power plant does affect even folks in Virginia Beach, it doesn't do so quite as directly.  Those Virginia Beach signatures that I collected are all the more serious if you know what I mean.  

I am not trying to minimize the hard work that you and others did.  And I am not saying that it isn't worth the fight.  I'm just pondering whether it will be enough and how you get more people interested and involved.

I don't think it affects just the people of Wise County though.  The air pollutants from China's coal fired plants travel across the oceans to impact California air quality.  Getting people to realize the coal is filthy and they should do something about it is what I was getting at.

Study sources of air pollution in this area and you will find there are relatively few point sources in the NoVa-DC area. Expert estimates are that about a half of our air pollution comes from the NOX and other contaminants in engine exhaust from cars and especially trucks. Roughly speaking, the other half of our air pollution comes from coal fired power plants to the west, and the pollution is more serious--sulphur dioxide, mercury and other contaminants. On nice dry days like right now you can see the ozone-haze accumulating from cars, trucks, and power plants on the mountains and ridges here in the Shenandoah Valley, making the Blue Ridge the blurry ridge! And Shenandoah National Park the most polluted in the park system!! The haze is deadly in the long run adding hundreds of fatalities on Code Red/Orange days and increasing everything from property damage to asthma attacks. You can find out a lot more about air (and other) pollution in your particular area at http://www.scorecard.org/
Note that Virginia's pollution rankings are pretty pathetic. Maybe we should just ask Tim to explain why when air pollution is so bad in the Commonwealth compared to other states, why are we even considering new sources?