The Winds Of Change?

Comment: Wind is better than Mt. Top Removal! Demand Virginia to stop blowing up our mountains for coal shipped to China!


By Debra McCown
Reporter / Bristol Herald Courier
Published: August 1, 2009

MOUNT STORM, W.Va. – After touring a working wind farm here, members of the Wise County, Va., Board of Supervisors expressed added enthusiasm about the possibility of generating wind power at home.

“I’m very much for it,” said Supervisor Virginia Meador, one of five county officials who visited the NedPower Mount Storm Wind Farm, a 264-megawatt facility owned by Dominion Resources and Shell Wind Energy. “I think it would be an opportunity for us to generate power we wouldn’t ordinarily have.”

The board members took a chartered flight from Lonesome Pine Airport in Wise to see the facility Thursday. The Mount Storm farm is similar to what Dominion proposes to build with BP Wind Energy in Wise and Tazewell counties in Southwest Virginia.

“I think it’s a doable project for Wise County,” said Supervisor J.H. Rivers. “I think it’s clean energy, something that’s environmentally friendly, and it’s a win-win situation for Wise County.”

Board of Supervisors Chairman Robby Robbins also talked enthusiastically about the minimal environmental impact the proposed project would have on Wise County – a coal-heavy region where public officials also support a controversial coal-fired power plant Dominion is building near St. Paul.

“You hear a lot of stuff about how generating electricity causes a lot of pollution, and you want to get to renewable energy resources that have a minimal impact on the environment,” Robbins said. “This seems to fit the bill perfectly.”

Robbins said the project would have little effect on local residents while helping to provide energy, keep property taxes low and create jobs.

“A lot of it’s on strip-mined land and it’s putting it to a use that’s going to be beneficial to the general populace,” Robbins said. “It’s just going to be an all-around good deal.”

Rivers said it could even be part of a larger plan to diversify Wise County’s energy economy.

“The power plant, the windmill project, the ethanol plant [being proposed by another company], and there’s other companies looking at Wise county that are energy-related,” Rivers said. “I think we could become known as the energy capital of Virginia.”

The sites being studied in Wise County for as much as 150 megawatts of wind power are on the ridges along Black Mountain: Bluff Spur, Nine Mile Spur and Rogers Ridge.

In Tazewell County, the proposed site is on East River Mountain between Bluefield and Tazewell, where as much as 100 megawatts of power could stretch along miles of ridgeline.

Together, the two wind farms could mean a $600 million investment and up to 250 megawatts of power, according to Dominion officials.

“We really hope that Wise and Tazewell are going to be the first wind facilities in the commonwealth,” said James Beazley, spokesman for Dominion.

Ryan Frazier, also a spokesman for Dominion, said the projects are still “in the early stages of development,” meaning the company is working with local officials as it collects wind data and completes geotechnical and environmental studies.

The proposed wind farms were announced in March. Typically, such projects take three to five years to go from the initial stages to construction, Frazier said.

It’s no coincidence, he said, that the one in Wise County would be developed near a large, coal-fired power plant; access to transmission lines for the wind-generated electricity is a plus, he said.

Emil Avram, director of generation business development for Dominion, said the Mount Storm project in West Virginia, which was finished in December, had little opposition. Fewer than a dozen people opposed it over concerns that it would negatively affect the view, and bird and bat populations, he said.

Avram said there is similar opposition involving a small number of residents in Tazewell County and he expects even fewer in Wise County, where the facility’s remote location would make it almost invisible to county residents.

dmccown@bristolnews.com (276) 791-0701

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