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Power plant's plans cause worry
Facility on Potomac River takes steps to reduce pollution, but neighbors are concerned about impact on water and air.
Date published: 12/11/2006
By FRANK DELANO A community group fears that a power plant's plans to reduce air pollution will cloud the southern Maryland sky and reduce the region's supply of drinking water. The coal-burning Morgantown Generating Plant sits beside the Potomac River at the end of the U.S. 301 bridge in Charles County, Md. Owned by Mirant Corp., the plant's two 700-foot-tall smokestacks are visible from much of the Potomac's Virginia shore in Westmoreland and King George counties. "We're pleased that Mirant has responded so quickly to meeting the requirements of the Maryland Healthy Air Act," said Joe Martin of the Cobb Neck Citizens Alliance. "But we're concerned that the technology they've chosen to use to reduce emissions is going to put a strain on water supplies and create a more visible pollution scar than needs to be." Maryland enacted new clean-air regulations this year. The law ordered reductions in pollutants by 2010 from Morgantown and six other coal-fired power plants. Mirant applied last month to the Maryland Public Service Commission to install wet scrubbers on two new 400-foot-tall stacks to reduce discharges of sulfur dioxide and mercury. Martin said the scrubbers will create large clouds of water vapor visible for miles across the river. In addition, the scrubbers will use an estimated 1.5 million gallons of water each day from new deep wells at the site. According to the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, an average household uses about 200 gallons of water each day. On that basis, water usage by the Morgantown scrubbers would equal the needs of 7,500 homes. In 2004, the U.S. census counted 7,859 housing units in King George County. Most of them obtain water from wells. Martin lives in one of 325 homes at Swan Point, about eight miles from the power plant. He said his community will eventually grow to 1,500 houses, all served by wells. Colonial Beach, seven miles across the river from the plant, also may experience rapid residential growth. Approved rezonings could almost double the 2,026 houses in town in 2000. All of the existing homes obtain drinking water from wells.
Date published: 12/11/2006
1.5 million gallons of water per day!!!
(posted by
jankinsey
, Sep. 25, 2007 2:41 pm)
This should be a non-starter!!! Use the dry scrubbers! Our aquifers are being depleted by more than houses. Consider golf courses. Years ago, on MD's eastern shore, Hog Neck public golf course opened, turned on its sprinklers, and homes, farms and businesses up to 20 miles away had to drill deeper wells. No compensation was ever offered by Talbot County. I am tired of paying for new wells when others' ignorance is the cause.
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