25th
Coal Plant in Rural Virginia to Power Northern Virginia
The Washington Post is reporting on the controversy surrounding Dominion Virginia Power’s plans to build a large coal-fired plant in a mountainside over a defuct strip-mine facility in southwestern Virginia, near the Kentucky border:
The Dominion plant’s fuel would come largely from Appalachia, but most of its electricity would not stay in that area.
Instead, Dominion officials said much of the electrical power would be sent more than 375 miles away, to highly wired Northern Virginia. The company’s demand for electricity is expected to grow 20 percent in 10 years, with much of that coming from the Washington area.
The Appalachian region is also known for mountain top removal, a highly destructive and enviromentally-devastating method of coal mining, according to Appalachian Voices and ILoveMountains.org.
