Surry's Huge Coal-Fired Plant

Coal-fired electricity generation remains one of the hottest issues in the Old Dominion and the nation. With some form of cap and trade law almost inevitable in Congress and with polls showing that 75 percent of Americans think that carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases need regulation, the issues really does have legs.

In Virginia, for the past several years, the tip of the spear was in St. Paul's in Wise County where Dominion plans to build a $1.6 billion, 585-megawatt coal-fired plant. That project has been a rallying cry for environmentalists nationally, some of whom such as the Sierra Club have pledged to fight any big, base-loaded, coal-fired plant anywhere. They have had some successes, notably in the Southwest.

Now, the focus is shifting farther east, to the flat peanut lands of Surry County about halfway between Richmond and Norfolk. There, Henrico County-based Old Dominion Electric Cooperative plans on building twin 750 megawatt units costing perhaps $6 billion -- in other words, a facility maybe three times as big as Dominion's in Wise County.

In a story I reported for Richmond's Style Weekly, I note that the so-called Cypress Creek Power Station would be the second largest of its kind in the state. It would instantly become the state’s sixth biggest air polluter, air pollution officials say. The facility would be fed via a new rail spur from Norfolk Southern’s coal mainline to Norfolk. Water for steam would be pumped 15 miles from the James River and heated water would be pumped back into the estuary. Fly ash from the coal will be buried on the project’s 1,600-acre site, not far from the town’s well water supply, local opponents say.

The plant would be in the town of Dendron, population 300, which is a flyspeck decorated with black "No Coal Plant" signs. These mimic the "No OLF" sings one sees throughout Tidewater Virginia and Northeastern North Carolina regarding local opposition to the Navy's efforts to locate a new landing field so their F-18 Super Hornet jet fighters can simulate air craft carrier landings. The problem: Super Hornets are some of the loudest aircraft ever built.

Old Dominion Electric Cooperative claims that the plant is needed to help them meet a shortfall by 2016 of some 4,000 megawatts Virginia will face in electricity unless new plants are built. ODEC has 11 mostly-rural; members in this state, Maryland and Virginia. It has begun the process of getting the 50 or more permits it needs to start construction.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers needs to approve a plan for ODEC to tap water in the James River and then return heated water back into the estuary not far from the tourist havens of Jamestown and Williamsburg. According to ODEC data, Cypress Creek would annually emit 3,085 tons of nitrogen oxide a year, 3,685 tons of sulfur dioxide, nearly a half a ton of lead, 283 tons of sulfuric mist and 2,155 tons of particulates. The project needs another permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers because construction will alter wetlands.

Of particular concern to the state Department of Environmental Quality is ODEC’s estimate that the plant will emit 118 pounds per year of highly toxic mercury. By contrast, Dominion Resources’s Wise County plant will emit only 5.5 pounds of mercury a year. Given prevailing wind patterns in Surry, the mercury could fall onto the water of the James River and Chesapeake Bay and be dangerous to wildlife. “This is something we’re absolutely going to be looking at,” says state air pollution analyst Sparky H.L. Lisle Jr.

Surry County, which has been home to twin nuclear reactors owned by Dominion for 37 years, could use the tens of millions the project would pay. Some 200 permanent jobs would help the rural, sleepy country.

Yet there are more questions about the project than just its immediate pollution impact. For one thing, ODEC has recently lost its largest member, the Manassas-based Northern Virginia Electric Cooperative with 142,000 customers, terminated its relationship with ODEC Dec. 31 over a contract dispute. “We thought we could do better with a different power supplier,” says Virginia Burginger, a NOVEC spokeswoman. If this is so, why the urgency to build such a big plant?

Another issue is if much-larger Dominion will fill the shortfall with new plants such as Wise, another nuke at North Anna, windmills and so on. A Dominion spokesman told me that the shortfall is actually larger -- about 4,600 megawatts by the last part of next decade. Dominion should be able to add 4,200 megawatts of extra generation capacity by then. If so, this raises questions about why the ODEC project is necessary or if their real aim is to wholesale electricity beyond its members.

Lastly, there are carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases. ODEC has not provided details about how they plan to capture CO2. A report by Synapse, a Cambridge, Mass. consulting firm funded by environmentalists, claims that depending on what kind of cap and trade law goes into effect, ODEC ratepayers could face extra costs of from $223 million to $1.76 billion to handle carbon dioxide. ODEC publicly dissed the report, calling it “speculative and inaccurate" but did not responded to a Synapse request to provide more information. ODEC claims that the plant will actually save its customers about $14 billion but doesn't say how.

A personal note: I tried to interview ODEC but they refused, saying that my blog postings on the site showed I was biased against the plant. I beg to differ. ODEC then went to the publications to whom I had tried to sell the story. Style Weekly, bless their hearts, told ODEC that they had reviewed my postings and didn't see that I had raised anything to the level of advocacy on my part.

True enough. I'm just asking questions like any reporter. I guess my questions weren't too welcome.

Peter Galuszka

METRO FINGER POINTING

The finger pointing concerning the METRO Red Line Wreck is in high gear.

There is one area of concern that you will not hear about in the MainStream Media:

Dysfunctional human settlement patterns in the METRO station areas.

The failure to evolve supporting settlement patterns (aka, ‘land use’) in the station areas is the primary reason that “most of the METRO trains leave most of the METRO stations mostly empty most of the time.”

No shared-vehicle system can operate efficiently pumping one way in the morning and the other way at night PERIOD.

If there was Balance between the station area travel demand and the METRO system capacity there would then be far more revenue to keep the system maintained and far more citizen support for the absolutely necessary stable funding sources.

There would also be no need to push the system beyond it’s capacity to serve peak demand.

Of course, there would also be far fewer wrong size houses in the wrong locations with underwater mortgages – but that is another story – see last post.

Want the details on what needed to be done and what STILL needs to be done? Read EMR’s 1989 report “It Is Time to Fundamentally Rethink METRO and Mobility in the National Capital Subregion” most recently revised and updated 18 October 2004.

Want to see a clear ‘blueprint’ for where and how Fundamental Transformation could be done? Google “Blueprint for a Better Region.”

And before anyone gets off their hay wagon and tries to pitch cheap shots about how the ‘real problem’ is building a heavy rail based shared-vehicle system in the first place, read the full analysis of one of the leading anti-rail quacks recent scribblings summarized in this abstract:

“Clifford Winston and Vikram Maheshri attempt to use benefit-cost analysis to make a definitive
statement about the social desirability of urban rail transit in the United States. Their argument is
deficient on several elementary analytic and statistical grounds. They underestimate total benefits, and therefore net benefits, and their failure to examine the suitability of their data and to pay attention to the usual caveats associated with benefit-cost analysis further undermines their
assertions. As a result, these findings should not be used to inform either the debate or decisions
about investment in urban rail systems.”

The study can be found at www.vtpi.org

Lets point the fingers at solutions, not the villains or the strawpersons. It has been 20 years and time is running out.

EMR

BROOKINGS MetroMonitor

A PATH TO UNDERSTANDING THE IMPORTANCE OF REGIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND THE IMPERATIVE OF EVOLVING REGIONAL STRATEGIES

On 17 June Gooze Views posted “How Virginia’s Metro Areas Are Weathering the Recession” about the three largest of Virginia’s 11 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs). On the same day a WaPo story addressed the Washington, D. C.-VA-MD-WV MSA. As Peter noted, the data to support both stories came from an invaluable new research tool developed by Brookings Institution called MetroMonitor.

MetroMonitor has just been launched but is already a very useful resource. It provides data on ten parameters covering – Gross Regional Product, Employment / Unemployment / Wages and Shelter for the largest 100 MSAs in the US of A. The MetroMonitor web site http://www.brookings.edu/metro/MetroMonitor.aspx?emc=lm&m=226673&l=2&v=41423 includes maps that are color coded by quartile for all ten parameters and a spread sheet. Brookings plans to up date this resource quarterly.

Viewing MetroMonitor as a whole, the first thing that strikes one is the immense diversity among the 100 largest MSAs. The 100 largest MSAs encompass about 75% of the economic activity in the US of A. (There are 366 MSAs in the US of A and a whole alphabet soup of other “Census Defined” geographies. The New Urban Region data used by SYNERGY is based on the 68 largest urban agglomerations and represents over 85 percent of economic activity in the US of A.)

The primary message to take from MetroMonitor? These data document that there is NO one nation-state-wide policy that will improve the economic, social and physical well being of all Regions. Further some of the most often touted “policy alternatives” (aka, ways to spend federal money) will damage many Regions.

Three examples drive home this point:

It is painfully apparent that MainStream Media and most Governance Practitioners are still dreaming that the Great Recession will be eclipsed by the two principle economic forces that have been relied on to end every recession since World War II. (It is worth noting in passing that it was World War II, and not specific economic policies that ended the Great Depression.)

The sale of cars and houses have pulled citizens and their Organizations out of every recession over the past 64 years.

It does not take Adam Smith, John Keynes or Milton Friedman to understand that policies that make shelter cheaper will damage, not help, all those Regions with depressed residential real estate markets and large numbers of lender owned housing. That is the focus of WaPo story noted above: “Region’s Economic Performance Ranks High: Housing Sector Remains a Drag.”

The US of A is an Urban society and many believe most of the ‘urban ills’ of the past 64 years were CAUSED by Federal policies. Kirkpatrick Sales provides a thumbnail summary of this view based on his analysis of the demise of South Bronx in Human Scale.

The other primary recession killer employed over the past six plus decades has been car sales. Policies to boost cars sales (especially Large, Private Autonomobiles) will help some rust belt MSAs over the short haul but it will damage EVERY Region in the long term because it will continue to drive dysfunctional human settlement patterns. Oh yes, then there is the matter of balance of payments / imported oil, air pollution, etc.

EMR suggested in this forum (“Addicted to Autonomobiles,” 2 June 2009) that those who can afford an autonomobile already have two or three and those who cannot afford an autonomobile need functional settlement patterns, not a vehicle they will not be able to afford soon. (You have noticed that every time the stock market ticks up because someone “sees the bottom,” the price of crude jumps even thought there is now a glut of petroleum.)

For all Regions, one-size-fits-all programs like “Cash for Clunkers” is just another way to dig citizens further into the Mobility and Access Crisis.

Finally with respect to employment:

Recent data shows that the National Capital Subregion (and other MSA-comparable geographies) have added jobs but also increased unemployment. EMR has pointed in this forum that what is needed in most Regions are jobs for those who are not highly skilled and are not highly motivated.

There is a lot of debate about how much economic boost ‘green’ jobs will produce but no one is talking about the sort of jobs for which most of the unemployed now (or after training will) qualify. Broad brush federal programs to ‘add jobs’ may not add the right jobs in any Region. The bottom line is that jobs need to be the right ones for each Region, not a one-size-fits-all hole into which the fed pours newly printed dollars.

All this points to the need for Regional Strategies to address Regional Conditions in order to evolve sustainable New Urban Regions comprised of Balanced Communities. Did someone say Fundamental Transformation of governance structure?

A couple of suggestions:

The MetroMonitor would be greatly enhanced by the addition of an indicator measuring Regional Consumer Confidence. If 70 to 80 percent of the US of A’s economy is consumer consumption then knowing Regional consumer confidence is critical.

Citizens can do a lot if they have the right information, are motivated and confident that what they are doing will improve citizen well being and quality of life.

Another improvement would be to aggregate the MSA data MegaRegion. Right now it looks like there is great diversity WITHIN MegaRegions.

For example, the National Capital Subregion (Washington MSA plus) and the Baltimore Subregion (Baltimore MSA plus) do not fall in the same 20 percent category for a single one of the ten indicators.

This suggests there is a need for not just Regional strategies but also MegaRegional strategies where Balance can be achieved from trade-offs within a MegaRegion.

Brookings staff is aware of the “America 2050" program that is focused on MegaRegions. This would seem to be a simple step to take on the path to creating ‘Real Regional’ data (aka, New Urban Region and MegaRegion Data) not just MSA data. Even more important will be to evolve subsets of the Regional Data to reflect Beta Communities and NOT state or municipal jurisdictions.

This last suggestion illustrates how valuable MetroMonitor would be if Governance Practitioners had not been doing everything in their power to obscure and obfuscate an understanding of the evolution of the organic structure of Urban systems for the past 222 years.

EMR

The Risky Business of Journalism

The dramatic escape from his Taliban captors by New York Times correspondent David Rohde shows just how dangerous journalism can be.

Yet journalists keep getting trashed, mostly from the right wing, for supposedly being biased or dim-witted dupes. Many actually work very hard risking their lives for little fame and, these days, less and less money. Instead of being spoon-fed information by sources with specific agendas, many painstakingly dig up information without fear or favor and put the pieces together as best they can before going into print, on the air or online.

Rohde, a two-time Pultizer winner, knew the risks when he arranged a dicey interview in Afghanistan. He was kidnapped and held prisoner with two others for seven months. Waiting when the guard was down, he and another man scaled a prison wall and and raced to freedom.

Much of the danger is overseas. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that during this year alone. 17 journalists have been killed. Since the early 1990s, 138 have been killed in Iraq, 60 in Algeria and 50 in Russia.

I am especially sensitive to Russia since I worked as a foreign correspondent there for a total of six years in the 1980s and 1990s and know some of the dead. I will never forget the coup against Boris Yeltsin on Oct. 3 and 4, 1993 where much of the action took place just outside our apartment.

I'll never forget the night of Oct. 3 when I drove alone in my Russian-made car (sort of like a 1972 Fiat) to the country's TV complex. Skin-head "red-brown" thugs, some with Afghanistan War experience, were trying to break into the TV center to broadcast their propaganda that the Yeltsin government had fallen. Loyal troops held fast instead. A small crowd of journalists watched from very close quarters. Rebels tried to bash their way in with a truck. Finally, one launched a rocket-propelled grenade into the front door. Machine guns on both sides opened up.

This occur ed minutes before I was driving to the tv complex. People were cowering on the roadway. I heard the machine guns and watched their tracer rounds make distinct lines from either side of the darkened road. The tracers crossed just at a point a few hundred yards where my car was heading. With no armor plating and armed with only a notebook, I turned around. Four journalists, including a Briton,. were caught in the bloodbath and were shot dead. A New York Times photographer was shot in the lungs. Three more would die before the two-day rebellion was over.

Here are some more examples of death in Russia:

• Cynthia Elban, an American stringer for Time, died in Chechnya in 1994. Her head was blown off in an air raid by Russian planes.
• A friend of mine and a Russian investigative reporter, Yuri Shchekochikin, died mysteriously of "allergies" in 2003 just as he was to fly to the U.S. to interview the FBI about Russian organized crime. High-spirited Yuri was a kind and entertaining man. A great drinking buddy.
• Paul Khlebnikov. An American of Russian descent, he had written critically of the Russian oligarchs and won their wrath. As he was starting a Russian edition of Forbes, he was shot down in an apartment. He was an acquaintance of mine.
• Anna Politkovskaya, famed for her tough articles on Russian government and military corruption in Chechnya, was gunned down near her apartment.

There are many more. None of these people took freedom of the press lightly. They paid for it with their lives.

What about the here and now in the U.S. Frankly, I am scared that the ad-slammed, dumbed-down and otherwise almost-out-of-business news media industry in this country will continue trends to not do investigative reporting and will only print or broadcast what powerful institutions, such as governments, corporations or universities want them to. I am already seeing it happen.

Peter Galuszka