Jun 27 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Peter Frost Daily Press, Newport News, Va.

The proposed coal-fired power plant in Surry County will add to the pollution problems of the James River and the Chesapeake Bay, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation said Friday.

The multibillion-dollar, coal- and biomass-fired plant proposed by Old Dominion Electric Cooperative is slated to be built on 1,600 acres in Surry near Dendron by 2016. Since the cooperative announced its plans in December, environmental groups have lined up in opposition, taking turns lobbing barbs at the facility, dubbed the Cypress Creek Power Station.

The latest salvo from the Bay Foundation claims the plant will add 950 tons of nitrogen pollution, 118 pounds of mercury pollution and 14.6 million tons of carbon dioxide pollution to the air above the bay each year.

"This pollution will only worsen the well-documented nitrogen, mercury and climate-change problems already plaguing the bay," said Joseph Tannery, the foundation's Virginia deputy director, in a release.

An ODEC spokesman, who said he had not yet reviewed the Bay Foundation's release, disputed the figures. On its Web site, the cooperative lists the potential pollutants the plant might emit over the course of a year. It does not list specific estimates for nitrogen or carbon dioxide, but its figure for mercury matches the one provided by the Bay Foundation.

Jeb Hockman, an ODEC spokesman, said it is misleading to say all of those pollutants would end up in the bay and the surrounding watershed.

"Until our air modeling assessment is done, I find the statement that (the pollution) would all go out over the bay to be misleading," he said. "It's not all going to be in any concentrated area."

Air modeling, which measures the pollutant lode emitted by the plant over a broad geography, is an involved study that ODEC should complete within six months to a year, Hockman said.

Figures the cooperative has provided on its Web site, he noted, were "very maximum numbers" that assume maximum output by the plant's generators. With the implementation of new technology by the time the plant is in service, those numbers are likely to be much lower, he said.

(c) 2009, McClatchy-Tribune Information Services