Today's Roanoke Times blasts Dominion Virginia Power for its proposed Wise County coal-fired power plant.
If Dominion Power is granted approval for this plant, the people in and around Wise County will pay the highest price.Already, residents of that area live in what the Harvard School of Public Health terms the "cone of death," where they are at three to four times higher risk of death from pollution-related causes.
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The extraction of coal to fuel the plant is also an environmental disaster, especially with today's preferred mining method: mountaintop removal.
In Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky, thousands of acres of mountains have been flattened and hundreds of miles of streams buried in the pursuit of coal. Dominion's Wise plant would add to that demand.
Dominion has backed off on its claims that the plant will be compatible with carbon-sequestration technology that has yet to be invented, so there is no doubt that this "clean coal" plant would contribute to global warming throughout its lifespan.
Coal isn't going anywhere. But Virginia regulators shouldn't allow Southwest Virginia residents to bear the brunt of the external costs of generating electricity from this dirtiest of fuels.
What else is there to say? Governor Kaine, stop this power plant -- and Dominion Power's "cone of death" -- immediately!