Pittsburgh Post Gazette
21 October 2007
By Don Hopey
MAIDSVILLE, W.Va. -- On a muddy hilltop northwest of Morgantown that was until recently a cow pasture, work is progressing on a controversial, $1.8 billion power plant that some day may help avert a water pollution disaster over the border in Pennsylvania.
The 695-megawatt Longview plant, which opponents say will damage air quality when it begins operating in 2011, will draw water from the underground Shannopin Mine pool in Greene County, reducing chances that the acidic, iron-orange water from a labyrinth of seven connected, abandoned, underground mines will build up, bust out and pollute the upper Monongahela River.
"The pumping rate will offset the natural recharge rate of the Shannopin Mine pool and will actually draw the pool down," said Paul F. Ziemkiewicz, director of the National Mine Land Reclamation Center at West Virginia University in Morgantown. "Otherwise, the mine water would pop out and flow into Dunkard Creek, a tributary of the Monongahela River."
Dr. Ziemkiewicz said a 5-year-old federal study of the mine pool that sprawls for 20 square miles under Greene County found that a break out at Shannopin, which ceased mining operations in 1993, would produce an iron-laced, acidic plume of water in the Mon from where Dunkard Creek enters the river 88 miles south of Pittsburgh, to the Gray's Landing Lock and Dam at mile marker 82.
The iron in the plume would eat up the oxygen in the river, creating at least a six-mile-long "dead spot," wiping out all aquatic life.
"This to me is a real success story because a study identified a looming environmental problem in advance and we got the right partnership between the coal industry and Longview to address it," Dr. Ziemkiewicz said. "It wouldn't have happened without a couple of years lead time."
The coal-burning power plant will need 5,500 gallons of water a minute for its steam turbines and cooling tower, according to Tom Wheble, who is overseeing the development for GenPower LLC. All of it will come from the Shannopin pool where water treatment facilities built near Bobtown, Greene County, with $7.1 million in state money are already operating.
The water will be conveyed to the power plant in a four-mile-long pipe that will parallel a conveyer belt of similar length from deep mines straddling the Pennsylvania-West Virginia border operated by MEPCO and Dana Mining Co.
"The quantity of water underground is more than sufficient to meet the needs of the project," said Mr. Wheble, who has worked on the plant for six and a half years. "We'll have run it through a second clarifier and a reverse osmosis process that will produce very clean water so it doesn't foul our boiler and can be recycled through the cooling tower."
After numerous delays caused in part by legal and permitting challenges by environmental groups, ground was broken for the power plant this spring. Work crews have just finished pouring concrete for the power plant's 16-foot-thick foundation and are laying pipe and an electric grid. Construction of the 85-foot-tall cooling towers will begin soon. The construction work will employ up to 1,500.
When it begins operating in 2011, Longview will be a "merchant plant," meaning it will sell the electricity it generates to local utilities that can then route it wherever they chose.
Though it has been touted by supporters as the biggest privately funded project ever in West Virginia, opponents say the power plant they call "Wrongview" will damage views from the popular outdoor recreational sites of Coopers Rock and Dorsey's Knob. And, they say, it will also add to the serious air pollution already plaguing Shenandoah National Park, Monongahela National Forest and the Dolly Sods Wilderness, all east and downwind of the power plant.
Mr. Wheble said the emissions issue -- the plant will emit 2,200 tons a year of sulfur dioxide, which contributes to formation of smog and acid rain -- was settled when Longview agreed to offset the emissions by buying allowances in excess of its emissions. In theory, that would reduce the total amount of emissions affecting the park and other public lands.
"We reached a settlement with the Sierra Club to buy allowances, some in multiples of two or three times what is required," Mr. Wheble said. "That's never been done before."
Jim Kotcon, vice chair of the Sierra Club's Mon Group, said the facility's developers haven't filed engineering blueprints as required, and opponents will continue to monitor the facility for permit compliance while it's being built, but conceded that most of the battles have been fought.
"Whether it gets built is now in the hands of the developer and financiers," Mr. Kotcon said. "There are appeals on water permits pending, but most of the regulatory agencies have signed off, and they won't hold up the plant."
Still, several farms and rural homes around the construction site have large signs in their front yards urging opposition to the power plant. And opponents are still upset that local government has allowed the project to avoid taxes by making payments instead.
"It wasn't the county's prerogative to grant that special taxation to an out-of-state company, but the biggest problem is in the local community, which already is inundated with truck traffic," said Duane Nichols, president of the Cheat Lake Environment and Recreation Association, one of the groups opposed to the power plant.
"But our group is resigned to the fact that Longview has been able to work through the permitting and political arenas in the state and county. We're just a small group that doesn't get much consideration."
Don Hopey can be reached at dhopey@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1983.