RAINELLE -- Apr 2 - Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News - Tara Tuckwiller The Charleston Gazette, W.Va.

For five years, the people of western Greenbrier County have been hearing that a power plant was coming, bringing jobs to Rainelle.

Some say they didn't quite believe it -- a $215 million project that the U.S. Department of Energy declared would "create on the order of 6,000 direct, indirect and induced new jobs." That would be more than enough to make Rainelle the thriving town it used to be, before its lumber mill, once the biggest in the world, shut down in 1970.

Now government agencies have committed to a big chunk of the total funding: more than $110 million. State environmental authorities three weeks ago made a preliminary decision to allow the plant. Two families whose houses are nearest the site are being bought out, and spokesmen for Western Greenbrier Co-generation LLC say they should break ground in summer, with the plant pumping out electricity by early 2009.

But the 6,000 jobs won't immediately materialize. The power plant itself would employ about 40 people, with another 60 or so contract workers, according to WGC. Further jobs would depend upon spinoffs.

Several people who live at the edge of the plant's proposed site say Rainelle needs any jobs it can get.

"It means coal trucks coming in and out," said Pete Beal, who saw his only son leave Rainelle to find work in Virginia. "It might be right at the end of my driveway.

"But I don't care. I can put up with a little inconvenience if it's going to be steady jobs."

Project manager Wayne Brown said he got the idea for the plant five years ago. He happened to be at Marshall University when a DOE representative made a presentation about "clean coal" technology -- including power plants that burn waste coal.

West Virginia is littered with piles of such "gob," which often leach poisons into nearby streams.

"And the Gazette, the previous week, had published on the front page a picture of the Anjean gob pile as the worst in the state," said Brown. "That's in my back yard."

Brown, a Greenbrier County native, had been in the news with past projects, including a farmers' co-op with former state Delegate Sarah Lee Neal and a firewood venture that got a $35,000 economic development loan from the state Department of Agriculture.

He said the DOE was immediately interested in the idea of burning the Anjean gob pile, near Rupert, for electricity. That pile alone would power the plant for 40 years, he said. The gigantic, 40-acre pile was abandoned by two bankrupt coal operators. Now the state Department of Environmental Protection spends about $300,000 a year treating the acid runoff to keep it from poisoning Little Clear Creek.

The Western Greenbrier plant would use a "circulating fluidized bed" boiler, which mixes waste coal with limestone to make combustion more efficient and reduce emissions. The technology has been used for three decades, but Western Greenbrier uses a new design that could be cheaper, faster and smaller to build, according to the DOE.

Western Greenbrier Co-generation is a limited liability company owned by the towns of Rainelle, Rupert and Quinwood. During the past five years, the plant has gathered powerful backers, from DOE officials to the state Economic Development Authority. Former state Sen. Ralph Williams attended last week's public hearing on the project, Brown pointed out, and the plant would be built on land owned by Williams' company.

It happens to be the old Meadow River Lumber site. The massive mill once transformed the area's lush forests into everything from ladies' shoe heels to flooring for the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York City.

People still remember.

"Rainelle used to be really something back in my teen years," said Joan Martin, a lifelong Rainelle resident whose apartment sits on the edge of the site. "It's been a long time. ... I think [the plant] might revive Rainelle a little bit."

Spinoff jobs promised

When the DOE decided to fund the project in 2004, a news release cited several benefits besides the reduced-emission electricity and the demise of the Anjean gob pile: a tilapia fish farm, a brick-making plant and what DOE termed an "eco-park" were among them.

Those are not part of Western Greenbrier's environmental permit application. Brown said they would happen separately.

"Other pluses from the project include consumption of wood waste from local forestry operations," DOE stated, "which will be combined with coal combustion ash for co-production of up to 10,000 bricks per day. The bricks -- called Woodbrik -- are a new material that can be used in the building industry."

Ten weeks ago, Western Greenbrier dropped that part of the project from its permit application. Brown said the brick-making will still happen.

"Marshall University is our partner," he said. "They're going to form the business to market" the bricks.

A 2003 Marshall report found "very promising opportunities" for Woodbrik, but advised Western Greenbrier management to look at making concrete from the ash instead. That is the current plan. Western Greenbrier proposes to produce a maximum of 75 tons per day of cement, in a kiln that will share the power plant's 280-foot smokestack.

DOE also stated: "The project will also provide support for an 'eco-park' that will use waste heat from the power-plant steam cycle to help produce economically valuable crops, including tilapia, a marketable fish."

Brown said Western Greenbrier has an option on nearby industrial park land for the eco-park. "The plan is, over a decade, to have about 1,000 people working on it."

Janis Harvey, who lives in the apartment complex near the site, echoed others' comments. She likes to hear about jobs coming to her town.

"I am concerned about the health risk, though," she said.

Critics to present concerns

At a community meeting Thursday night, state Department of Environmental Protection officials discussed the plant with residents.

It is a comparatively small plant. In contrast with Western Greenbrier's 90 megawatts and 280-foot stack, the John Amos power plant in Putnam County can produce 2,900 megawatts with two 900-foot stacks, DEP permit engineer Joe Kessler said.

The plant has the potential to emit 600 pounds of pollutants per hour, or more than 2,400 tons per year, according to DEP documents. That is within legal limits.

One person at the meeting asked whether fallout from the plant would coat everything in the area with a blanket of dust. The answer is no, Kessler said. Most of the particles will be caught in a filter, and any remaining ones will be dispersed high in the air by the stack. "You shouldn't see any fallout from a facility like this," he said.

Another question arose about the plant's extra ash. Ash that doesn't go into the cement will be spread back on the gob pile to neutralize the acid runoff, Kessler said.

One resident asked whether toxic metals in the ash could then leach into the creek. The federal Environmental Protection Agency decided four years ago not to regulate power-plant ash, which is increasingly used to treat acid mine drainage, as a hazardous waste. But a recent study by the National Academy of Sciences, which is chartered by Congress to advise the government, concluded that federal regulation of the practice is needed to minimize the risk of contamination.

Critics of the project have said they plan to present written comments to the DEP before the April 10 deadline.

"Really, the biggest issue is this project touts itself as a demonstration project," said Margaret Janes, senior policy analyst for the Appalachian Center for the Economy and Environment, a regional law and policy organization. "It's going to get $110 million from the government based on that."

But Janes said she hasn't seen the tilapia farm or the brick plant or the eco-park materialize: "I see nothing like that in the plan."

Among other concerns, Sierra Club spokesman Jim Kotcon said some other plants that use the same fluidized-bed system have lower emissions of some pollutants than Western Greenbrier proposes.

"Not only can lower emissions rates be achieved with the controls that they propose," Kotcon said, "but much lower rates could be achieved with better technologies."

The plant has done everything required by law to control emissions, according to DEP documents. DEP air quality director John Benedict, in response to a question at the public meeting, compared the Western Greenbrier plant with a well-known power plant in downtown Morgantown.

The Morgantown plant is "unusually clean," he said. "And this is very comparable."

To contact staff writer Tara Tuckwiller, use e-mail or call 348-5189.