Longview Power, knowing a sucker when they see one, is back at the Monongalia County Commission with their hand out… yet again.
This time they want the taxpayers of Mon County and West Virginia to subsidize another one of their misguided, polluting schemes. The Mon County Commission has an agreement in hand giving Longview II (or Son of Longview for you horror-movie fans) a tax break with a payment in lieu of taxes (PiLoT) arrangement to build another power plant near their first power station. Longview has already filed for permits with the WV Department of Environmental protection (DEP).
This time Longview has plans for a gas-fired power station to be built next to their coal-fired power plant in Mon County, in the community of Fort Martin, WV. Yes, this is right by the 1960s-era Fort Martin Power Station, which is still chugging, churning, and spewing along with NO sign of shutting down in the foreseeable future.
Longview also supposedly has plans for a solar array in PA. There is little opposition to the solar installation, but I wonder if that is just a distraction. We know from Longview’s past dealings that they dangle these “green” shiny objects to divert our attention, but then renege on all of their green promises once they get what they want (see the cooling water and coal transport paragraphs below). I fear the solar panels may just be another one of those expendable items.
Just to refresh your memory on Longview Power I (sorry, this is long):
GenPower/Longview Power was a power-plant real-estate agent from Massachusetts, putting together all the parties and obtaining tax breaks from Mon County along with low-interest public loans/bonds from the state of West Virginia to build a coal-fired power plant. They then sold the project to someone else (along with the name Longview Power), and skedaddled out of town with the profits before anything was built. They are just brokers making a deal. They don’t operate power plants. They do this all over the country.
When GenPower/Longview started this process here in Mon County shortly after the year 2000, they planned on building a gas-fired power plant in the Fort Martin Community on land owned by the Mon County Development Authority. At that time (early 2000s), natural gas prices were relatively high compared to coal and the movers and shakers here and elsewhere in West Virginia convinced GenPower/Longview Power that they needed to build a coal-fired plant, not a gas-fired plant, as WV is a coal state. The construction unions loved this as long as the plant was built with union labor. They did not care that all of the coal was coming from non-union mines. Coal-fired plants take much longer to build than gas-fired plants, so they pushed hard for the coal plant over the gas plant. They didn’t care what was being built as long as they built it, and the longer it took to build, the better. Building and Construction Trades members turned out in droves from multiple states to speak in favor of the plant during our local public hearings. The poor, unrepresented union miners only had a couple of voices at these meetings.
Fast forward to startup: Longview did not run at more than 40% capacity for the first three or so years. I lived across the river from the plant, and I could tell when they were running full bore and when they were merely idling with a little bit of steam coming out. The people of the Fort Martin community know even better. No wonder this “cleanest coal plant in the nation” supposedly has low emissions: it hardly ran for the first few years of operation! Longview’s design-build model resulted in faulty design and faulty equipment. Sure there were wisps of steam coming out of the plant most of the time, but it was not fully operational until the equipment manufacturers, who became the creditors after Longview LLC filed for bankruptcy, poured millions of more dollars into it (over the $2+ billion it cost to build). Starting up a coal-fired power station can take three days. If you are nearby, you know when it happens.
Longview promised to be clean. For cooling water, Longview promised to treat and use contaminated mine water which, when pumped down, would allow a flooded coal seam to be mined. A win-win, right? Well after Longview was almost ready to start up, they ‘discovered’ that the mine water was net acid! Imagine that. In this region of acid-mine drainage, they did not know, after many years and many analyses, that the mine water they would be pumping was acidic. You just have to see the orange stream channels around the Fort Martin community to know that!
So Longview had to get cooling water from the Mon River after all, even though they promised in all of their permitting that they wouldn’t need to do that.
Then there is coal transportation: another lie. Longview touted themselves as a mine-mouth plant. In other words, they were supposedly situated right next to the mine, so the coal they used would not have to be barged on the river and trucked up to the power station. There was a little bit about the loooong conveyor belt they were building from the PA side of the mine…. But oh no, there wouldn’t be those big pesky overweight trucks running up and down Fort Martin Rd starting in the early morning hours, running people off the road, creating all kinds of noise, and spewing nasty fumes. Oh no …..
Oh yes! Just like the water lie, Longview now gets its coal from river barges and then trucks it up Fort Martin Hill to the plant, starting at 4 in the morning, destroying the road, creating noise and air pollution, and literally running other cars into the ditch.
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Now back to the present:
Natural gas is a fossil fuel. Burning it emits carbon dioxide and hastens climate change. Getting it out of the ground, compressed, and transported to where it is used is a whole other set of issues on top of that.
Please call, write, or e mail all three commissioners on the Mon County Commission and tell them you are opposed to this next phase of Longview lies.
Contact Info:
Commissioner Thomas C. Bloom
Commissioner Edward A. Hawkins
Commissioner Sean P. Sikora
Monongalia County Commission
243 High St
Morgantown, WV, 26505
Phone: (304) 291-7257
https://www.monongaliacounty.gov
Thanks for your attention if you made it this far,
paula