VA Coal Fired Power Plant

VA Coal Fired Power Plant

St. Paul in southwest Virginia, an area greatly known for its coal and coal fired power plants, is an area proposed use for another Coal Fired Power Plant. The power plant is a 585 megawatt plant and will be capable of supporting almost 150,000 homes is the surrounding area when operational. This decision was approved unanimously by the Air Pollution Control Board in Wise Virginia. Dominion Power is the company that owns the power plant.

To help pursued the Air Pollution Control Board members, made several amendments to the permits proposed by Dominion Power. The permits restricted the proposed amount of sulfur-dioxide by more than two-thirds, and also reduced the amount of mercury that the power plant would emit. And one of finals permits Dominion Power agreed upon was to convert one of their existing coal fired power plants in central Virginia, to a cleaner burning, natural gas fired plant. These limitations are curial to reducing the environmental impacts of the power plant. Mercury, a heavy metal, can get into the soil and local water systems were bioaccumulation can occur, disrupting the entire food chain, and having dire health consequences of the fish, mammal, and even human populations. Sulfur-dioxide emissions get into the atmosphere and are a main contributor to acid rain, which can be dumped across neighboring county lines, and also has significant environmental cost to crops and water systems.

Dominion Power also pledged to only use Virginia coal. While creating jobs, and increasing our states Gross Domestic Product, Virginia has many environmental impacts. Virginia coal is mostly mined through mountain top removal methods. This area covers many of the existing streams and creel beds that support much wildlife. It also requires clear cutting large amounts of forest, or just exposing a large area of earth. This leads to great quantities of soil erosion from the area and increases the turbidity of local water ways, which limit the amount of animals and plant life that any certain water ecosystem can support.

Even with stricter emissions on coal fired power plants, many environmental impacts are inevitable. Besides reducing our electrical consumption, ‘greener’ and renewable substitutes for coal are the best cases to further eliminate these negative environmental impacts.