Community meeting looks at air, water risks of new Tenaska plant
By Heather Michon
Correspondent
More than 70 Fluvanna County residents gathered at Cunningham Creek Winery on Monday evening (Sept. 22) – not to talk about wine, but about power.
In August, Nebraska-based Tenaska, one of the nation’s largest privately-held energy companies, unveiled its plans to build a 1,540-megawatt natural gas–fueled power plant alongside its existing Branch Road facility, promoting the $2 billion project as both a way to meet Virginia’s soaring demand for electricity and as a significant source of tax revenue for Fluvanna County.
But many in the crowd felt Tenaska had raised far more questions than it answered, particularly when it came to the environmental impacts of having not one, but two massive gas-fired power plants in operation at the heart of the county.
How will the plants impact local air quality? What will be the health impact for county residents? What are the impacts of withdrawing millions of gallons of water from the James River and discharging millions of gallons of heated water into the Rivanna?
And why, they wondered, should rural Fluvanna bear the potential environmental costs of a plant that will primarily feed Virginia’s booming data center industry?
“They get to enjoy the power up in Northern Virginia, and I guess we get to enjoy the pollution that comes along with generating that power,” said Josephus Allmond, a staff attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center and resident of Troy.
Power and particulates
If the Expedition Generation plant is built right next door to Tenaska’s existing 1,000-megawatt plant, “this will be the largest site of gas generation in Virginia,” he said. “I want people to sit with that for a moment.”
Natural gas plants are often described as cleaner than coal, but burning gas still releases nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, and fine particulate matter — pollutants long associated with respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, as well as premature death.
Allmond said he had submitted a question during the Tenaska meeting, asking company representatives to explain to him how many tons of particulates his infant son would be exposed to if the plant were built.
“But they didn’t answer the question I wrote,” he said. “In fact, they haven’t even done any work on what the emissions would be from the largest gas generation facility in the Commonwealth.”
When he ran the numbers himself, based on publicly available data, he estimated that the new plant would emit 143 tons of PM2.5 annually.
PM2.5 are tiny airborne particulates, about 1/30th the width of a human hair, that are closely associated with health impacts from pollution from gas generation plants.
Jessica Sims, field coordinator for Appalachian Voices, said her group is seeing the same patterns throughout rural Virginia. Developers, she said, are building gas projects on speculation, gambling that growth will justify them later.
“Companies are kind of excited to think about, well, we can build this, and they will come. Sort of a ‘Field of Dreams,’ but with pollution.” She urged residents to demand full disclosure from Tenaska and from county officials before the project moves forward.
“If they’re trying to bring this project to your community, you deserve to know what its impacts are going to be in full,” she said. “Not just the good parts, not just the sound study that they did, but how much pollution they want to put into the air.”
Keep talking
With the Planning Commission expected to take up key local permits for the plant within a matter of weeks, some in the audience wondered how much the public could do to slow down the process.
Some recall the last time Tensaka came to town.
“We did this,” said one audience member. “2002, 2003, 2004. We had protests. We signed petitions. We stood on the side of the road with signs. We lost that battle. How do we not lose this one?”
Sims said there was no one playbook for slowing or stopping a project.
In Pittsylvania County, for example, community members had successfully opposed a new power plant by “making it visible everywhere, and in creative ways,” such as utilizing floats at a local parade.
“It was talking to everybody at any kind of community gathering there is, and just having a presence,” though flyers, mailers, media outreach, t-shirts, signs, anything that keeps the conversation going.
She also said that a “consistent, respectful barrage” at local officials can be a powerful technique. In Pittsylvania, everywhere commissioners and supervisors went, “they heard about it, they heard about it, they heard about it.”
“I think that sort of sustained pressure we have seen win,” she said. “Sometimes it’s a short fight. Sometimes it’s a really long fight.”
Next steps
The event was hosted by the Fluvanna Horizons Alliance, a new grassroots coalition of local and regional groups advocating for greater transparency regarding Tenaska’s plans.
“Our community is entitled to clear, accountable answers on how Tenaska intends to protect our air and water,” said Community Voices founder Sharon Harris, who coordinated the event.
Residents will have the opportunity to share their thoughts and concerns during the Planning Commission’s public hearings on three Tenaska zoning applications at its monthly meeting on Oct. 7 at 7 p.m.
The meeting will be held at the Fluvanna County courthouse.
Residents can also submit their thoughts on the county’s My Two Cents webpage at https://www.fluvannacounty.org/bos/webform/my-two-cents
