Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards

admin July 21st, 2008

This testimony is from a local resident of Wise County and was made to the Air Pollution Control Board at its June 24th hearing in Wise, VA. I feel it is a well rounded description of many of the problems and complexities that haunt SW Virginia. Her words continue to move me to no end and I wanted to share her words with others.

We are standing at the crossroads, and somehow, we must make sure that we choose the right road. The right choice, in fact, can help us and the planet as well. Many thanks to this resident for allowing me to share her thoughts and words with you.

Best wishes,

Kathy R. Selvage

Jaculyn Hanrahan’s statement before the Members of the Air Pollution Control Board
Re: permitting of Dominion Coal Powered Electric Plant’s 2 Air permits.
Date: JJ KELLY HS June 24, 2008

Good Morning, Members of the citizens Air Pollution Control Board. I am Jaculyn Hanrahan I live in Coeburn VA, part of Wise County, and work in St. Paul Virginia. I have lived Southwest Virginia for the last 26 years with the exception of three years when I lived in Charlottesville while getting a law degree. I am a catholic sister for 39 years in the Congregation of Notre Dame. During these years I have worked in education, legal services and church work with low income people, vulnerable people. I am speaking here today as a private but concerned citizen of this county; concerned about all its constituencies: present and future, old middle and young, business and retired, native and visitor, environmentally versed and environmentally challenged.

I realize that whatever decisions continue to be made about this plant and its impact on our region, state and globe, as a community we will need to grow in our ability to share our mutual love of the land and its resources of people and place. There are people in this room with whom I am friends and we are opposed in our views.

I am opposed to the permitting the building of this power plant, because I am opposed to respiratory illnesses, smog, neurotoxins, and acid rain, resulting from the 25 million lbs of pollutants to be produced yearly by this plant.

I am opposed to your granting a permit to build this Dominion coal powered plant because I am against its adverse side effects, its intended or unintended consequences. Specifically:

The side effects of the continued destruction of our future and hope for more than what has been the legacy of the shadow side of our coal heritage, particularly for what will be the modern coal legacy of mountain removal, river and stream loss, dangerous spill possibilities and lack of alternative sustainable technologies for our region.

Our heritage is not only a coal heritage. We have paid the Coal heritage Piper for long enough and that Pied Piper has taken away our children, either in the middle of the night by a rock fall, or in broad daylight when our children come of age in their exodus from our communities which does not offer them sustainable jobs or quality of life, or worse still in their addictions to drugs of choice as they leave here in mind, spirit and soul but stay here in body only, too sick, too depressed, too lost, too toxic, to incarcerated to get employment even at Wal-Mart because they can’t pass drug testing. We have paid the coal heritage Piper enough and we will not continue to dance to that tune for 75 to 80 plant jobs for all of us and a lot of wealth for a few.

We have had a century of coal production and we still have in Dominion’s own words in their promotions about this plant: one of the poorest areas in the state of Virginia.

We may have high rates of poverty, unemployment, sickness, and threatened communities but WE ARE NOT STUPID. No matter how stupidly our state politicians, our community leaders, our business leaders, our local media powers treat us, WE ARE NOT IGNORANT. Calling Virginia City a ‘city,’ saying ‘coal is clean,’ accepting page after page of newspaper and radio ads that say ‘before and after’ will look the same, being assured that 71, or 49 or 8 pounds of mercury is safe for us to take into our beings, that breathing 34+ tons of Sulfur dioxide, breathing Nitrogen oxides, 5 plus tons of Carbon Dioxide will not affect our life span or quality of life, being forced to accept before the fact by state statute and numerous local resolutions that this plant is in our best interest, being promised that carbon Capture STORAGE is possible and usable here, being told that Dominion will provide us ‘environmental programs’ which are really the connecting of sewer lines to home. (And this was told us by our County Administrator!), and most outrageous of all, our being asked to accept that destroying the forests, the mountains, the streams and rivers of central Appalachia is required, is reclaimable, is necessary because of our need from our addiction to energy. These are illusions.

WE are remote, we are rural, we are a vulnerable population, we are under monitored by regulating authorities. SO another unintended consequence [side effect] is that the promoting of this plant by Dominion and their state and local point people, in addition to the plant’s polluting effects will result in a wild west mentality. This will mean that whatever needs to occur so we can get every bit of coal out of these mountains no matter the devastation to life, limb and property, it will be acceptable, and good because of the power plant, because we need jobs, because we need energy, because gas it 4+ dollars a gallon. Well how little will you me for a 300 million year old mountain range with all its communities of creatures? And who are we, who are we in Wise County or the state of Virginia to think it is ours to give away?

OUR HERITAGE is WE, WE WHO LIVE HERE, here, our people, our forests, our streams, rivers, our mountains, and all their inhabitants, our air, OUR CENTRAL APPALACHIA. And for a rare time in our history there is a convergence between what can happen here now and what those outside of here also wish to have happen.

[public comments ended here. The rest of the prepared statement follows]:

There are two ways we can go: the old way with coal as King or the new way: with Conservation as partner, alternative sustainable technologies, global awareness. These are real options. People are looking to Wise County because they are connected to us. There are options, but as they are being presented with the coal plant permits and their ever changing sets of facts, they are mutually exclusive. Either we sacrifice everything for coal production and coal powered energy; or we conserve our energy uses, conserve our extractions, preserve our culture, our beauty, our broader heritage of the oldest mountains in the world, with some of the richest temperate level bio-diversity and exquisite people (those legends who truly understand and live from the uniqueness of both the natural beauty and cultural wealth and brilliance of our region.)

Which is it to be: Coal Powered Plants – the single largest sources of the big four pollutants: 35% CO2 carbon dioxide, 37% Hg mercury, 23% of NOx Nitrogen Oxides, and 67% of SO2 sulfur Dioxides? OR real renewable, which is what the Appalachian Mountains were created to be.

We want conservation, energy efficiency, to cap and reduce power plant emissions because they are the largest industrial emitter of CO2 and other pollutants that contribute to global warming.

We want to promote clean sources of energy — solar, wind, geothermal technologies, invest in new climate friendly technologies, and to retrofit existing plants for zero emissions.

This may be ground zero, but Central Appalachia *is* Everywhere and everywhere *is* Central Appalachia.

Dominion and our beleaguered public officials and coal business interests want us to take a chance one more time on the brass ring for the coalfield region, to believe that the panacea of sequestration of captured carbon will come in our lifetime, or the lifetime of our children, to believe that the loss of 470 plus of our mountains will improve the quality of our lives and bring in tourism! They want us to believe that breathing, eating, drinking tons of these pollutants is a reasonable sacrifice for us and our babies in the womb to endure, for 100 plus jobs and 4 million dollars in tax revenue for Wise County. Believe that it is better to destroy the goose that lays the golden eggs so we can get a finite number of eggs. You in your position as a Citizen Air Pollution Control Board can believe that we want to be known *for the more that we are *and have always been. We are more than our coalfields, even more than our Metro coal going for $300 at ton, or our regular coal that going for $105 a ton. We are not going to get that value, that will go to people out of here. Those million or three million dollar trains that leave here daily don’t compare in value to the cost of the destruction done to the land, the local communities. Trust me, no matter what side we are on here: The souls of those who dig up the earth, overburden the streams, know even as they dig they are destroying the future here for their children. That is what happens when we are forced to make the false choice between jobs or the environment. We need to chose JOBS which renew and sustain our ENVIRONMENT.

There is more here than our coal. We want our crooked road for music, our trillium for rarity, our Great Smokies, our Clinch Mountain range, our clinch River valley, our Clinch river and its tributaries in Southwest Virginia that make up 1773 miles of waterway and form the Upper Clinch Watershed. It goes from Tazewell, Wise, Russell, Scott Lee, Dickenson, West Dante, to Tennessee, Norris Dam; it meets with the Tennessee river, goes west to the Ohio River, a tributary of the Mississippi River and into the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean.

On the holy mountain God will provide. Which God are we talking about COAL or CREATOR?

Thank You.
Jaculyn Hanrahan

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