Comments on LongviewPower, Past, Present, and Future; MVCAC, March 12, 2019 The Mon Valley Clean Air Coalition was an outgrowth of theissues raised by Longview Power and its impacts on the regional environmentincluding the public health, air quality, roads, etc. We participated in the Public Hearing on the PILOT Agreementheld in ca. 2003 here in the Court House. We asked representatives of Longview if they would put into writingtheir promise to use WV coal, their promise to refrain from consuming waterfrom the Mon River for cooling water, and their promise to be a “Zero Discharge”facility. We learned early on that all three of these promises were broken. Longview elected to use coal from Pennsylvania, althoughthey did use a conveyor belt to avoid extreme truck traffic on the local roadsuntil recently. Trucking of coal there is a severe problem. Longview decided to use Mon River water in their cooling andother operations, and installed Reverse Osmosis units to purify the riverwater. Longview, from the beginning has not been a “Zero Discharge”facility. Their stacks emit largevolumes of flue gases containing thousands of tons of carbon dioxide and manyother chemicals in lesser quantities. The fly ash and bottom ash are waste discharges from the plant and gointo the local environment. Their liquidwaste pipeline flows north into Pennsylvania and down into abandoned mineoperations, contaminating the water underground. At the present time, the 300 (plus) heavy diesel trucks perday transport Pennsylvania coal from a Mon River dock up and over a steepunstable county road, thru the Ft. Martin community, up to the Longview Powerplant. This road is the subject of severedamages due to the high level of truck traffic and the dangerous condition forauto drivers. Alternatively, the shorter and relatively flat road from theCumberland Mine would bring this coal directly south from Pennsylvania to thepower plant. The vapor plume from the Longview power plant continues toobscure the western sky for the University High School and all those residentsalong Bakers Ridge Road, Pt. Marion Road, Stewartstown and the northern CheatLake area. Longview is now proposing to construct a natural-gas-fired powerplant in Ft. Martin, and add a solar panel farm nearby. The existing PILOT Agreement now in force representsa public agreement arrived at thru a process of limited public participation. Any modification to this agreement oradoption of any new agreements needs to be developed with the maximum ofopenness and public participation. A potential tax statement exclusive of aPILOT is a prerequisite. Greenhouse gases, global warming and climate change can nolonger be ignored. The burning of methane, ethane and/or other hydrocarbonsmust be offset with carbon taxes or other schemes. And, every effort should bemade to locate the solar panels in West Virginia, not Pennsylvania. Duane G. Nichols, Coordinator, Mon Valley Clean AirCoalition, Morgantown, WV 26508
