The Mon Valley Clean Air Coalition was an outgrowth of the issues raised by Longview Power and its impacts on the regional environment including the public health, air quality, roads, etc.

 

We participated in the Public Hearing on the PILOT Agreement held in ca. 2003 here in the Court House.  We asked representatives of Longview if they would put into writing their promise to use WV coal, their promise to refrain from consuming water from 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, although they did use a conveyor belt to avoid extreme truck traffic on the local roads until recently. Trucking of coal there is a severe problem.

 

Longview decided to use Mon River water in their cooling and other operations, and installed Reverse Osmosis units to purify the river water.

 

Longview, from the beginning has not been a “Zero Discharge” facility.  Their stacks emit large volumes of flue gases containing thousands of tons of carbon dioxide and many other chemicals in lesser quantities.  The fly ash and bottom ash are waste discharges from the plant and go into the local environment.   Their liquid waste pipeline flows north into Pennsylvania and down into abandoned mine operations, contaminating the water underground.

 

At the present time, the 300 (plus) heavy diesel trucks per day transport Pennsylvania coal from a Mon River dock up and over a steep unstable county road, thru the Ft. Martin community, up to the Longview Power plant.  This road is the subject of severe damages due to the high level of truck traffic and the dangerous condition for auto drivers. Alternatively, the shorter and relatively flat road from the Cumberland Mine would bring this coal directly south from Pennsylvania to the power plant.

 

The vapor plume from the Longview power plant continues to obscure the western sky for the University High School and all those residents along Bakers Ridge Road, Pt. Marion Road, Stewartstown and the northern Cheat Lake area.

 

Longview is now proposing to construct a natural-gas-fired power plant in Ft. Martin, and add a solar panel farm nearby.  The existing PILOT Agreement now in force represents a public agreement arrived at thru a process of limited public participation.  Any modification to this agreement or adoption of any new agreements needs to be developed with the maximum of openness and public participation. A potential tax statement exclusive of a PILOT is a prerequisite.

 

Greenhouse gases, global warming and climate change can no longer be ignored. The burning of methane, ethane and/or other hydrocarbons must be offset with carbon taxes or other schemes. And, every effort should be made to locate the solar panels in West Virginia, not Pennsylvania.

 

Duane G. Nichols, Coordinator, Mon Valley Clean Air Coalition, Morgantown, WV 26508