Letters To The Editor

Tiny Town Wants No Part of Coal Plant
Editor, Times-Dispatch: I read with great interest the news story, "You Can Save Money or You Can Save the Planet," as my home is a few miles from the proposed Cyprus Creek coal plant.

I can assure all that many of us here are far more concerned with saving our health and our town.

This plant would be a massive industrial site smack-dab on Main Street in a tiny town. This should be the site of an old-fashioned ice cream shop, a playground, a park, or any other thing that one envisions when thinking of small-town America -- certainly not a massive coal plant and its accompanying 176-acre toxic fly-ash dump.

The Old Dominion Electric Co-operative has descended on our community like vultures. It has bullied us. It has lied to us. It has laughed at our concerns. It has held secret meetings. And now, together with our Board of Supervisors, it's asking us to take one for the team so that this electricity can go elsewhere. I don't care how much money it has promised our community. It has shown us who it is before we've even signed on the dotted line.

Chris Anderson.
Surry.

Rex Springsteen writes in the news story, "No: It's Bad for the Environment," that the Cypress Creek plant will release 14.6 million tons of carbon dioxide annually, but he doesn't mention that CO2 contributes less than 5 percent to atmospheric heat retention. Fully 95 percent of heat retention comes from, of all things, water vapor. That's right, evaporation from oceans, lakes, and rivers -- and people breathing -- accounts for nearly all greenhouse-gas heat retention.

The U.S. emits less than half of global CO2, surpassed by China, India, and other industrialized nations. Even if the U.S. were to completely eliminate CO2 emissions, that would reduce global greenhouse gases by less than 2.5 percent. But we're not talking about all CO2 -- the current administration's plan to tax carbon emissions hopes to cut CO2 by a wildly optimistic 70 percent in 2050, for a worldwide reduction of 1.75 percent.

Just how much are consumers willing to pay to reduce CO2 by 1.75 percent? Does anyone want his electric bill to jump 30 or 40 percent? I don't.

I strongly favor power plant pollution-control appliances, such as selective catalytic reduction systems to reduce nitrogen oxide, and scrubbers for sulfur dioxide. But let's get the facts straight before we start taxing carbon emission, or choose not to build a much-needed power plant because it emits CO2.

Mike Dodd.
Montpelier.

A portfolio of energy sources including efficiency, wind, biomass, and natural gas in place of the proposed plant would yield major consumer savings, as shown in a report released recently by Synapse Energy Economics. These other energy sources can be phased in as needed, avoiding a rash decision to spend billions on a massive coal plant in the face of dire environmental and economic consequences for the state.

Moreover, as ABT Associates has demonstrated, investing in efficiency rather than a coal plant yields thousands more jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars more for the state economy. And following the efficiency recommendations of the governor's commission on climate change would save more than 6,000 megawatts -- equivalent to the power from four massive coal plants.

Consumers would be the first to benefit from serious efficiency investments because efficiency costs a third as much per kilowatt-hour as power from a new coal plant.

ODEC's lip service about efficiency will ring hollow until it devotes a respectable fraction of the billions it is eager to spend on the plant to well-designed efficiency programs. ODEC has repeatedly declined to provide concrete information on any efficiency programs. Consumers would be the first to benefit from greater openness and more scrupulous assessment by the utility of its energy options.

Tom Cormons.
Charlottesville.

For the first time in more than 300 years, the speaker of the House of Commons in the Palace of Westminster, the mother of all parliaments, has resigned. Good -- but too little, too late for myriad reasons. Whilst he is a personable chap, fellow Glaswegian and Great Britain's Michael Martin outstayed his welcome as speaker. He finally bowed to pressure over the controversy of members of Parliament and their expenses -- and rightly so.

At least Martin did the right thing, though he had to be dragged (as they all do).

Which leads us to Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives, and second in line of succession to be commander-in-chief of the United States. She has lied repeatedly in public and private regarding CIA advice on Guantanamo Bay and interrogation of terrorist detainees.

Nancy Sinatra had a song, "These Boots Are Made for Walking." Yes, they are, and Madam Speaker, after stepping in it with those boots, you should certainly take a walk.

Karyn McDermott.
Richmond.