Power plant permit hearing concludes
PITTSBURGH – A three-week hearing into an appeal of Wellington Development’s air quality permit for a waste-coal burning electric power plant in Nemacolin, Greene County, ended Friday, and a decision will be issued by the end of November, the judge said. Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board Judge Thomas W. Renwand also told the attorneys and two local residents, who are among the appellants, that he will begin accepting post-hearing briefs in about three weeks and commended them for their efforts in the complicated case.
“This was an extraordinary case,” Renwand said. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard such a hard-fought case.”
Dennis Groce of Point Marion, Phil Coleman of West Brownsville, the Group Against Smog and Pollution and the National Parks Conservation Association appealed the air quality permit the state Department of Environmental Protection issued in June 2005 to Wellington for the Greene Energy Resource Recovery Plant.
If the permit is upheld, it contains a provision requiring construction to begin by Dec. 21, Wellington’s attorney, Brendan K. Collins, said after the hearing.
Collins said Wellington began designing the plant four years before it received the permit to make sure it satisfied all environmental regulations.
“It was the most advance work I’ve seen,” said Collins, who specializes in environmental law.
The DEP lowered the amount of certain pollutants that are allowed in the plant’s emissions 20 percent below the amount that plants constructed in the past were allowed to emit, he said.
“We’re raising the bar,” Collins said, noting that power plants built in the future would also have to meet the lower emission standards.
In addition, Collins said, the plant will consume at least eight gob piles of waste coal in Greene, Fayette and Washington counties as the fuel for the plant.
Groce said the appellants’ primary objections to the permit are that the state did not provide enough time during the permitting process for citizens to comment and have input about the project, and that the pollution control technology in the plant is not sufficient.
“I think we made the case very clearly,” Groce said.
Attorney Robert Ukeiley represented the appellants.
Groce said the National Parks Conservation Association objected to the permit because it is concerned about the impacts of pollution on national parks in West Virginia and Virginia, and GASP objected due to impacts on regional air quality.
“I think everybody made the points they wanted to make,” Coleman said, adding that the amount of pollution from the plant that would reach Shenandoah National Park in northern Virginia is only a fraction of what will reach the borough of Point Marion.
Wellington’s plans call for a $1.3 billion, 525-megawatt plant on former LTV mine property.
It would produce electricity by burning 80 million tons of waste coal over its 30-year lifespan.
The company claims that burning the waste coal would save the state $238 million in abandoned mine reclamation costs.