Judge rules for environmental groups on Virginia power plant!!!!

08.11.2009 – From the Wise Energy for Virginia Coalition
August 11,2009

*****************************************************
JUDGE RULES FOR ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS IN CHALLENGE TO VIRGINA POWER PLANT
*****************************************************
Contact: Cale Jaffe, Southern Environmental Law Center Senior Attorney, (434) 760-0816
Cat McCue, Southern Environmental Law Center Senior Communications Manager (434) 953-8672
Kathy Selvage, Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards, (276) 219-2721

You can download the decision here: http://wiseenergyforvirginia.org/downloads/Wise%20Decision.pdf

(Richmond, VA) – In a momentous victory for clean energy advocates in Virginia, a Richmond Circuit Court judge ruled today that the State Air Pollution Control Board violated federal environmental law in permitting Dominion Power’s coal-fired power plant in Wise County in the southwest corner of the state.

Judge Margaret P. Spencer agreed with a coalition of environmental groups that the “escape hatch” in Dominion’s Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) permit rendered that permit unlawful. The Clean Air Act’s MACT program regulates emissions of hazardous air toxics, such as mercury, which can cause severe neurological deficits in infants, fetuses and young children. Judge Spencer ruled that the “mercury emission limit … must be set ‘irrespective of cost or achievability,’” and that the “escape hatch” was “violative of the laws addressing pre-construction mandates.”

When Congress passed the Clean Air Act, it required that such permits be obtained before construction begins on a power plant, to ensure that it is designed and built in a way to protect the public health and welfare. Dominion, which started construction a week after the Virginia air board approved the permits in June 2008, has said the plant is about 20 percent complete. The judge’s ruling granted the coalition’s requested relief, which was to invalidate the MACT permit.

In addition to the challenge on the mercury permit, the coalition also sued the air board in July 2008 for issuing a permit that failed to adequately limit emissions from the coal plant of approximately 5.4 million tons a year of carbon dioxide, small particles of soot, and other so-called “conventional” pollutants. The court affirmed the “Prevention of Significant Deterioration” (“PSD”) permit, regulating conventional pollutants.

The Wise Energy for Virginia Coalition has raised a host of concerns about the Wise County coal plant over the last several years, including air pollution and the health of the local community, water quality, mountaintop removal coal mining, and the impacts of the plant’s carbon emissions on global warming. Some 42,500 Virginians from across the state signed petitions and sent letters and comments to state and company officials opposing the project.

Following are statements from coalition members.

CALE JAFFE, Southern Environmental Law Center Senior Attorney:
“This is an important victory for the health and welfare of Virginians. Once a coal plant is completed, it may prove very difficult to retrofit after the fact to remedy violations of the Clean Air Act. So this decision is essential for assuring that the Clean Air Act’s most stringent health-based standards will be met before a coal plant is constructed. We hope Dominion will take this ruling as a sign that it needs to leave expensive coal-fired power plants in the past, and move quickly toward developing sustainable, clean energy sources for a 21st century green economy.”

KATHY SELVAGE, Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards: “For the citizens of southwest Virginia this ruling today will provide a longer and healthier life. The Commonwealth should be moving swiftly toward producing the energy we need through non-polluting means like the BP/Dominion wind farm proposed for Wise County to further strengthen the health of the people and the environment.”

TOM CORMONS, Appalachian Voices: “Today’s ruling is cause for celebration for Virginians all over the state who’ve opposed the permitting of this plant from the beginning. It underscores the dangers and costs of increased reliance on coal and we hope it will help spur an aggressive move toward clean energy that supplies electricity needs without polluting Virginia’s air or destroying its mountains.”

LAUREN GLICKMAN: “Today’s ruling represents a major step away from the economic and environmental devastation caused by our reliance on coal towards a rational energy policy of renewable energy and efficiency. Although the judge did not send the CO2 issue back to the air board, we hope that as Congress debates sweeping climate change legislation, Dominion will see the writing on the wall and begin to curb its carbon emissions.”

GLEN BESA, Virginia Chapter of the Sierra Club: “We would urge Dominion to reassess its decision to build this coal plant. The ruling today is related to air pollution, but Dominion really needs to consider alternatives such as efficiency and renewable energy. Now would be a good time.”

****************************
The mission of the Wise Energy for Virginia Coalition is to halt new coal-burning power plants from being built and end the destructive practice of mountaintop removal coal mining in Virginia, and re-power the Commonwealth with cleaner, less expensive, sustainable energy sources. The coalition includes Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards, Appalachian Voices, Chesapeake Climate Action Network, Sierra Club and Southern Environmental Law Center.


http://wiseenergyforvirginia.org/2009/08/judge-rules-for-environmental-groups-on-virginia-power-plant/#comment-3883

Uranium mining firm asks for appeals court review

Comment: In-situ leaching uranium mining is not modern uranium mining, it has been done in Europe years ago, and it ruins the water! The uranium groups are not truthful and have little regards to Native Americans whose lives are ruin from past uranium mining! Uranium Mining groups are just greedy dirt daubers!
Written by HEATHER CLARK

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) – A uranium mining company has asked a federal appeals court to review an April decision that a proposed uranium mine site in western New Mexico is on American Indian land.

Lewisville, Texas-based Uranium Resource Inc. said Monday it asked the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver for an “en banc review” of the decision that sided with the Environmental Protection Agency. Monday was the deadline for making the request.

A 2-1 decision made on April 17 by a three-judge panel requires URI subsidiary Hydro Resources Inc. to obtain a groundwater injection permit from the Environmental Protection Agency, which delays the company’s plans to mine for uranium near Church Rock. The company already has a state groundwater injection permit.

Hydro Resources Inc. had challenged an EPA ruling that the mine site was on Indian land. The site is surrounded by the Navajo Nation.

“Our objective remains to resolve issues with the Navajo Nation regarding uranium mining in New Mexico, so we can be well positioned to begin production as quickly and as safely as possible,” URI president and chief executive, Dave Clark, said in a news release.

An en banc review would bring the case before 12 circuit court judges, but the court could always reject the request.

Rick Van Horn, vice president of URI, said the company hopes the judges will reconsider the April ruling.

“The way the opinion was written, it looked like we had a chance of doing something with it,” Van Horn said in a telephone interview from Kingsville, Texas.

If the court fails to review the case, Van Horn said his company’s plans are to obtain the EPA permit, but doing so would delay the project by six to 18 months. It is the last permit needed before mining can begin.

URI, which has a license to mine 15 million pounds of uranium, could be producing within 18 months to two years using the state groundwater injection permit it already has, he said, if the Navajo Nation would lift a ban on uranium mining.

“We would much rather settle this with the Native Americans and go forward so we can just start mining,” he said.

Many Navajos oppose renewed uranium mining in northwestern New Mexico because they suffered health and environmental problems during previous uranium mining booms in the 1960s and 1970s.

But Van Horn has maintained methods of mining have improved in recent decades and his company is committed to environmental protection and the safety of its employees.

“We continue to meet with members of the Nation and I believe we are making some progress” on resolving their concerns, he said.

Telephone calls to a spokesman for Navajo President Joe Shirley Jr. were not immediately returned Monday.

A senior attorney with the Navajo Department of Justice’s Natural Resources Unit who has previously commented on the case has said the tribe wants the EPA rather than the state to have jurisdiction over groundwater at the proposed mine because the federal government has a higher obligation to protect the interests of American Indians.

Hydro Resources, which owns the surface and mineral rights, wants to inject chemicals into the ground to release uranium and pump the solution to the surface in a process called in-situ leaching.

The company had sought a permit from New Mexico in 2005 to operate the mine, but the state asked the EPA to make a decision on the status of the land.

Hydro Resources has argued the site, known as Section 8, isn’t legally part of the Navajo reservation and is private land. But the appellate panel determined that the EPA was correct in designation the land as Indian Country.

The Church Rock chapter was set aside by the federal government, which bought land from the Santa Fe Pacific Railroad Company in the 1920s and gave some parcels to individual Navajos and placed others into a trust for the Navajo Nation.

http://nativetimes.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1925&Itemid=55