Opponents of a proposed $1.8 billion coal-fired power plant in Wise County, Va., are being urged to boycott tonight’s public hearing about the facility.
The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality will host the hearing at 6 p.m. at St. Paul High School’s auditorium.
The coal industry is urging plant supporters to pack the meeting and speak in favor of a pollution permit for the facility.
Environmental groups are urging opponents to stay away because of the way they allegedly were treated at last month’s hearing.
Supporters arrived earlier than noted in the DEQ public notice and signed up to speak in droves, effectively keeping any opposing voices from getting a word in until about 10 p.m.
So opponents decided this week to send written comments instead and vowed to continue fighting the plant in other ways.
"We don’t even want to acknowledge it," Wise County resident Larry Bush said Wednesday of the hearing. "The way it was stacked against us last time, we don’t even want to acknowledge them this time."
Bush, a member of Southern Appalachia Mountain Stewards, a local group opposed to surface mining and coal-fired power plants, said the public really has little input in the decision-making anyway.
"It’s just a sham," he said. "Our state legislature and our Board of Supervisors sold us out."
The Virginia General Assembly decided about four years ago that a coal-fired power plant would be built in the region, and Wise County supervisors recruited the project for economic development, he said.
"It would be a waste of our time," Bush said of the hearing. "I hope everyone sees it for what it is – a pacifier. They want to make people think they have a say in it when site preparation has been taking place from Day 1."
Already, ads for construction workers to build the plant are running in newspapers in the region, Bush said.
"It’s a farce," he said. "It’s a slap in peoples’ faces."
But Bush said opponents will continue getting their message across in venues that matter.
"We’re not going to sit back and do nothing," he said. "We will do something. We’re not giving up. We’ll never give up. It ain’t going to happen."
The Southern Environmental Law Center indicated in a Wednesday news release that opponents should submit written comments to the DEQ before the April 18 deadline, and they should attend future State Air Pollution Control Board meetings since the board decided last month that it would make the permit decision instead of the DEQ.
An organization called "Friends of Coal" is urging in radio advertisements that those who work in the coal industry or in businesses that support coal mining to attend the hearing to show support in either words or by their presence. They want friends and neighbors of miners to show up as well.
Attempts to reach a spokesperson for the group were unsuccessful on Wednesday.
The United Mine Workers of America’s Coal Miners Political Action Committee met in Castlewood recently and approved a resolution endorsing the power plant. Some union members plan to attend the hearing and stand together with coal executives in support of the plant.
According to the resolution, the UMWA believes the power plant would not only provide needed jobs in the region but would supply the electricity needed to keep the nation secure. The plant – which would burn Virginia coal, waste coal and biomass such as wood – also would clean the region’s environment by getting rid of harmful waste coal piles that pollute water, the UMWA stated.
kstill@bristolnews.com | (276) 679-1338
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