Old power plants, factories to be checked for air pollution
2008, Times-Dispatch
Steam billows from scrubbers that were installed at Dominion’s Chesterfield Power Station.
Gov. Timothy M. Kaine announced today plans to check for air pollution around old power plants and factories.
The so-called “grandfathered facilities” were built before creation of the federal Clean Air Act in 1970. Because of that, they have had not to comply with strict pollution requirements applied to newer operations.
“We believe this is the first ever effort of its kind in the United States,“ Kaine said at a news conference today at the Chesterfield Power Station.
The big Dominion Virginia Power plant near Chester is one of three facilities that will be examined first.
The other two are Appalachian Power’s Glen Lyn power plant in Southwest Virginia and Meadwestvaco Corp.’s factory at Covington.
Executives with the three companies said at the news conference that they were willingly cooperating with the effort.
Under the plan, the companies will perform computer simulations that show whether their facilities’ emissions are causing the air around them to contain unhealthful levels of pollution.
The state Department of Environmental Quality will ensure that those analyses are accurate.
If the facilities are causing unhealthful levels of air pollution, they will be required to add costly pollution controls.
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Reader Reactions
Just another reason to rapidly ramp up the building of more nuclear powerplants. Oh yea the leftist energy haters don’t like nuclear power, so the only substantial alternative is to continue to build coal fired powerplants. It’s always interesting to see the energy haters stumble all over themselves when an issue like this comes up. First it was man made global warming, and when that was proven to be garbage, it was global climate change, although nobody knows what the climate is SUPPOSED TO BE. Nuclear doesn’t emit greenhouse gasses, but they don’t like that because of “safety issues”, it’s past time thinking Americans called these leftist energy haters out and demanded answers from THEM…and wind, solar and conservation etc. isn’t going to cut it anymore!
Were it not for the obstructionists who resist every attempt to build new, cleaner power generation facilities, older facilities would have already largely been replaced with cleaner, more efficient,modern ones much less reliant on fossil fuels.
Dave, you’re kidding right?
How dare they try to clean up our air. The economy is in shambles. We cannot afford to save our lives. Global Warming hasn’t even happend yet. Power is a free market - yeah right, because we have so many choices as to where we can get our power from. Honestly, do you realize how ignorant this sounds? Check out a scientific article on warming some time. If that’s too tough for you to comprehend, maybe check out our forecast for the next 10 days which has 90s as far as the eye can see when “normal” is (or used to be) 85. Seven of the eight warmest years on record have occurred since 2001 and the 10 warmest years have all occurred since 1995. Open your eyes and stop spewing nonsense.
Here we go again, more democratic socialism directed by our Marxist President. Who in the heck does Tim Kaine think he is to check the degree to which Virginia’s power plants pollute the air we all breathe? Who made him the Governor all of a sudden? Plus, why would the power companies not hold up their end of the bargain and adhere to the regulations? Does Timmy not trust them? After all, the bill was called the “clean air act” so it must have worked cause global warming hasn’t even happened yet.
Furthermore, if Virginians want to keep buying the power from these plants, then the power plants have every right to pollute all they want. If people have a problem with that, they should get another power company. It’s called the free market people! I call on all my fellow concerned Virginians to fight against this type of oppresion from Kaine and his Socialist Masters in Washington. I don’t want big brother snooping around in the pollution I breathe! I for one trust my power company!
RIP #3
Dominion has already solemnly promised to clean up Chesterfield Power Station before 2099. This looks like another PR stunt to push that back to 2149.
Kaine continues to do the bidding of those in Washington who wish to completely takeover State government, rather than attempting to look out for the interests of Virginia. Those “grandfathered” in the Clean Air Act of 1970 were for a reason - the age of the facilities made it impractical and overly burdensome to comply with the same standards as newer facilities. Undoubtedly, as older technology in these plants has been replaced, pollution has improved, however for the DNC Chairman (I will no longer refer to him as Governor because he has abandoned his gubernatorial responsibilities in favor of placating Obama and the super-liberal faction of the Democratic Party)should not be in the business of attempting to hold Virginia businesses to a higher standard than similar facilities elsewhere - especially given the severely depressed economic conditions which exist and don’t promise to improve significantly for some time.
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