|
Home > Newsletter Home > TOC > Article
WESTERN GREENBRIER COGEN PLANT SAGA CONTINUES
click for print view
by Beth Little, WV Chapter Energy Committee |
2008
Coal proponents try to keep a bankrupt idea alive via public funding and petitioning Senator Byrd
A public meeting was held on March 6 at the Greenbrier West High School that was billed as a status report on the Western Greenbrier CoGen (WGC) plant. This is the plant that would be built in Rainelle and burn gob from the Anjean gob pile, and several more gob piles in southern WV.
The project is broke; in fact, they defaulted on loans this past fall and were bailed out by the state Development Office to the tune of $3 million. The projected cost of the plant has risen from $215 million to $416 million, so instead of their $107 million award from the Clean Coal Program covering half the project, it will only cover about one fourth.
So, are they done? No no. But they do admit that they have big financial problems. The WGC bond debt service ratio, based on projected revenue and expenses, is 1.85/1, but Citigroup, who would issue around $300 million in bonds to fund construction, requires a ratio of 2.1/1. In lieu of the 2.1 ratio, Citigroup has required a $25 million contingency fund be set up, and that’s what WGC needs to come up with to move ahead.
Their action plan is simple – BYRD, BYRD, BYRD. They passed out a petition to be sent to Byrd and asked everyone to sign it and take it to friends and neighbors. They read a letter to Byrd to be signed by Ralph Williams, an ex-state senator and reputed friend of Byrd’s. They have requested a meeting of principals with Byrd to plead for help. They also want Manchin and Rahall to help.
They had a list of CHALLENGES:
• bond market turbulence
• $25,000,000 contingency fund
• BOP cost uncertainty (see below)
• GE priorities (something about coal fired steam power plants that I didn’t get clearly)
• 2.1 bond debt service ratio
• NEPA ROD uncertainty (see below)
• environmental settlement agreement (see below)
BOP is “balance of plant” and the cost uncertainty is because the demand in China for the labor, engineering and materials to build coal fired power plants is making the costs go up and the putting the availability of these things in question.
The fact that DOE hasn’t issued the ROD was listed, but when asked what was holding it up, the answer was a vague “variety of reasons” “not a conspiracy, just bureacratic delay.”
The “environmental settlement agreement” would be with CLEANBRIER, which is an unofficial group of local citizens and representatives from the three litigants of the air quality permit – WV Highlands Conservancy, WV Chapter Sierra Club and Greenbrier River Watershed Association..
Cleanbrier, held a meeting March 22 and made a final decision not to accept their numerous inadequate attempts at settlement and to issue a press release about further legal action. A suit was filed March 26 with a circuit judge to order state regulators to revoke the air quality permit. Under state rules, the DEP is required to revoke the permit after 18 months if the company does not submit “written proof of a good-faith effort that such construction ... has commenced.” The permit was originally issued in April 2006.
TAKE ACTION:
You can help. Letters are better than petitions.
Please write Senator Byrd and ask him not to spend any more taxpayers money on this bad idea.
Byrd’s address in Charleston (works better than DC; email and fax work very well too):
Senator Robert C. Byrd
300 Virginia St, #2630
Charleston, WV 25301
fax: 304-343-7144
email: from his website - http://byrd.senate.gov/
Talking points:
• WGC is not a “clean coal” plant. Clean coal funding should be reserved for truly cutting edge technologies, not old-technology plants that burn gob and/or blended coal. The only “innovation” with WGC is the inverted cyclone separator; all this does is place the separator upside down, resulting in a smaller footprint for the plant. This technology already is being used in China.
• WGC fails to use state-of-the-art pollution control technology. WGC proposes to emit up to 1.3 million pounds of SO2 per year, and 1.1 million pounds of NOX per year. Ozone in the lower atmosphere causes smog, affecting individuals with chronic respiratory diseases like asthma.
• WGC proposes to emit up to 28 pounds of mercury per year. Mercury is a known and potent toxin to the central nervous system, endocrine system, and kidneys. Pregnant women and children are especially vulnerable to the effects of mercury. There is already a fish advisory in WV streams because of mercury.
• WGC will contribute to global warming by emitting up to 1.7 billion pounds of CO2 per year. Burning coal and/ or gob creates more CO2 per BTU than any other alternate fuel. Leaders in science and the energy industry agree that limits must be placed on CO2 emissions. New plants should provide for adding these limits in the future, but this plant does not.
• Taxpayers’ money should not be used to clean up a mess created by the coal industry. Instead, funds from SMCRA’s Abandoned Mine Lands fund, which come from coal companies, should be used to clean up the Anjean gob pile.
• The water supply in the Rainelle, WV area may be insufficient for WGC’s needs. Instead of determining that the Meadow River has sufficient flow at all times of the year, the DEP just set a limit below which water cannot be taken – to be monitored by WGC itself. The middle Meadow River is used by locals for fishing and recreation, and the lower Meadow River attracts whitewater kayakers and boaters from all over the U.S. and world. In addition, WGC will draw down the groundwater and affect people’s wells.
• Truck traffic on an alreadydangerous U.S. Route 60 will skyrocket as a result of WGC. WGC will require up to 97 round-trips on U.S. 60, WV 20, or County Route 1 from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
• If, as WGC suggests, jobs are the issue, the $107 million U.S. governmentinvestment would be better spent by forming a labor-intensive enterprise, such as a re-constituted Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). With $107 million, a CCC could hire some 160 workers for 20 years at $12 per hour with full benefits, including health insurance. WGC proposes to create only 55 direct jobs, less if the proposed cement kiln fails to materialize. No business plan or market for the cement kiln is known to exist at present.
OURBOTTOMLINE: THEEXTENSIVE COSTSOFTHIS PROJECTFAROUTWEIGH THELIMITEDBENEFITS!
|
