Permit Process Was A Breeze For Carbo Power Plant

CARBO, Va. – It may be difficult to imagine amidst the current ongoing controversy about the Virginia City Hybrid Energy Center, but 50 years ago the Clinch River Plant here in Carbo sailed through the regulatory process in just three months.

No one – not even Carbo residents who live in the shadow of the plant’s smokestacks – remembers any controversy when the plant was announced and built in the 1950s.

Residents say the project sounded good at the time and no one really knew what lie ahead.

“Had I known what I know now, I think I would’ve protested, just because of the land and everything they took,” said Shirley Parrott Purcell, who grew up in this small Russell County community.

The project was announced in January 1956, according to news archives, and Appalachian Power broke ground in May of that year, after just a two-month process for an air pollution permit.

By contrast, the permitting process for Dominion Virginia Power’s Virginia City plant, which is currently under construction in Wise County, has been drawn out over years, with hundreds flocking to public hearings.

Even after the Virginia Air Pollution Control Board ratcheted down the pollution limits recommended by the Department of Environmental Quality for the new project, a coalition of five environmental groups is challenging the permits through the courts with hopes of stopping the project.

“This plant comes at too massive a price,” Kathy Selvage, vice president of one of the groups, Appalachia, Va.-based Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards, said in a recent response to the plant’s groundbreaking.

“It sacrifices mountains, clean air and water, and health for the promise of 75 jobs,” Selvage said. “In the past, we chose coal because we didn’t know any better. Today, we do.”

Opponents of the plant cite Carbo as an example of the health risks from a coal-fired plant.

“There’s all of the hidden costs of something like that,” said Carmen Cantrell, who has attended several meetings to oppose the Virginia City plant. “You have to look at the toll that it takes on the environment, the toll that it takes on people’s health and the resulting health costs for health care for people.”

She said it’s shocking how easily the plant got its permits – and not only does she believe the Virginia City plant should be stopped, she says the Carbo plant should be closed as well.

“It doesn’t matter how many pollution controls they put on those things ... you can’t make coal cleaner,” Cantrell said. “When they burn it, they put it [pollution] into the air. When they catch it, they’ve got to put it somewhere, and they put it in the landfill. It’s just taking the problem from one place and shifting it to another.”

Diana Withen, a local science teacher who also has been active in fighting the plant, says the reason people didn’t fight the Carbo plant is that 50 years ago is that they didn’t know the effects it would have on their health.

“Now, there’s all kinds of scientific research. We know it kills people and hurts babies,” Withen said. “People are, of course, waking up and smelling the dirty coal plants and trying to do something about it.”

She said elected officials in Wise County who approved a resolution supporting the Virginia City plant didn’t do enough research and had “dollar signs in their eyes.”

Burning coal has global consequences like global warming, she said, and she believes people have to stop burning coal in power plants or risk destroying the Earth.

“As soon as we feel like we’ve stopped this one, we’ll go after Carbo,” she said of first targeting the plant under construction.

In addition to the effects of power plants themselves, local activists also are concerned about another impact of coal-fired plants – mining methods that involve removing mountains to supply the coal.

To spread the word about the effects of mountaintop removal – the surface mining process used to extract much of Southwest Virginia’s coal – and continue the fight, opponents of the Virginia City plant are hosting an event called Weekend for the Mountains on Sept. 12-14, and will hold a prayer vigil on the final day.

“Coal has been a blessing, and it’s been a ruination; that’s all there is to it,” said Cantrell. “We depend on it too much, and it’s not going to be there forever.”

dmccown@bristolnews.com | (276) 791-0701