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Dominion Virginia Power to Upgrade Systems at Coal Plants, Including One Near Chester

Posted on: Thursday, 24 November 2005, 06:00 CST

By Rex Springston

Dominion Virginia Power plans to spend about $500 million on pollution controls at coal-burning power plants in Virginia, including its World War II-era plant near Chester.

The controls would go beyond federal requirements, and they would have no effect on customers' electricity bills, company officials said.

"Virginians are reaping the benefits of cleaner air as a result of reductions in our ... emissions, even as we have increased electric generation to meet new demand," said Thomas F. Farrell II, the company's president and chief operating officer.

Company officials announced their plans at a news conference yesterday at the utility's Chesterfield Power Station near Chester.

The controls would be installed between 2010 and 2015. They would bring significant cuts in emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and mercury, company officials said. The pollutants contribute to human health problems, haze and acid rain.

"I think this is going to make a noticeable improvement in air quality, certainly in this part of the state and a lot of other parts of Virginia," said Robert G. Burnley, director of state Department of Environmental Quality.

The new controls would come on top of more than $2 billion in pollution equipment that Dominion Virginia Power has added or pledged to install since the mid-1990s.

Most of that money, $1.2 billion, was committed to resolve a federal complaint against a plant in West Virginia.

The new work would include scrubbers -- systems that cut sulfur- dioxide emissions -- serving two power-making units at Chesterfield, two units at a power plant in Yorktown and four units at a power plant in Chesapeake.

The work would be part of a continuing cleanup for the Chesterfield Power Station, Virginia's largest coal-burning plant and long one of the state's top polluters. The plant got nitrogen- oxide controls, among other things, in recent years on its four coal- burning units.

Cale Jaffe, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, an environmental group, said he generally approved of the utility's plans. However, Jaffe said he felt federal mercury- cutting rules aren't tough enough.

Dominion Virginia Power is reducing pollution to comply with federal requirements announced early this year.

When all the work is finished by 2015, the company plans to cut sulfur-dioxide emissions about 80 percent, nitrogen oxides 74 percent and mercury emissions 87 percent, said David A. Heacock, a senior vice president.

Those cuts go beyond the new federal rules. But by making extra cuts, the company may obtain credits that it can sell to companies having trouble cleaning up, company officials said.

Virginia plans to propose its own mercury-cutting requirement next month, and the DEQ's Burnley said it probably would be tougher than the federal rule, which requires power plants to cut emissions nearly 70 percent by 2018.

Virginia also will propose its own plans to cut sulfur and nitrogen pollution, but they probably won't differ much from the new federal requirements, Burnley said.

The pollution cuts that Dominion Virginia Power announced yesterday are contingent upon the state's proposals not differing significantly from the federal rules, Heacock said.

The utility says its pollution cuts will not affect homeowners' electricity bills because rates are frozen until 2011 under a state plan to deregulate electric power. After that, the company said, the market will determine the rates, which could go up or down.

Source: Richmond Times - Dispatch

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