Kaine Says Letter Not Prompted By Plant Controversy

BY GREG EDWARDS
Media General News Service

RICHMOND – Saying he’s hearing otherwise, Gov. Tim Kaine admonished the State Air Pollution Control Board in a letter this week to follow state law and regulations.

One air board member is among those who think the board’s scrutiny of a permit for Dominion Virginia Power’s planned coal-burning power plant in Wise County prompted the letter.

Kaine said in the letter that it was not specific to any particular matter.

“It has to be the Wise County permit,” air-board member Bruce C. Buckheit of Fairfax said when asked what he thought prompted the letter. The board will hold a hearing on the permit for the plant on June 24-25 and plans to vote on the permit at its conclusion, Buckheit said.

The air permit is one of two currently before the board. The other is for a Mirant Corp. power plant in Northern Virginia.

The air board consists of five members appointed by Virginia’s governor. A new state law that takes effect on July 1 increases the board size to seven members. Kaine has yet to decide who he will name.

Dominion Virginia Power spokesman Jim Norvelle said Friday that the company had not seen Kaine’s June 10 letter and would have no comment.

In the letter, Kaine said he expected board members to exercise their authority according to the board’s regulations and processes while considering the advice of the attorney general’s office. He said the board should not consider any aspects of the environment other than air quality in its decisions.

While the limits to the board’s authority may be the obvious, Kaine wrote, “recent reports to me necessitate that I remind you of them.”

Gordon Hickey, the governor’s spokesman, said, “Some information has come to [Kaine] that sometimes decisions are being made that are not in the purview of the air board.” He did not provide specifics.

Kaine is concerned that the state can end up in court and lose because of those decisions, Hickey said. The letter was not about the Wise County plant, he said.

Buckheit said he doesn’t know what people are telling the governor.

However, he said the air board is considering whether to require the plant to use coal that has been washed and processed to remove impurities. Dominion wants to burn coal straight from the mine and waste coal from piles that have accumulated in Southwest Virginia after decades of mining.

Burning unwashed coal substantially increases the amount of air pollution emitted, Buckheit said. Dominion Virginia Power, however, is arguing that the piles of waste coal cause water pollution and removing them to fuel the plant will provide an offsetting environmental benefit.

The company may have a point, but the air board wants to determine whether the waste ash in the plant’s boilers will be disposed of properly. The board is not considering setting water pollution limits but is just trying to examine the company’s arguments, Buckheit said.

Cale Jaffe of the Southern Environmental Law Center in Charlottesville said the federal Clean Air Act says the state not only can but is required to consider the fuel to be used in a power plant. The plant’s pollution under the proposed permit would be much greater than for similar plants, which is largely related to the fuel, Jaffe said.

Greg Edwards writes for the Richmond Times-Dispatch.