Stewart ‘disgusted’ with coal ash plan moving ahead

A deadline for public comments on a plan to treat and release toxic water into the Potomac River has come and gone.

The Prince William County Board of Supervisors asked for a 60-day extension of a public comment period ending December 14 for the Possum Point Power Station near Dumfries and Quantico where water from coal ash ponds have been seeping into tributaries for years.

If the comment period was not extended, the Board threatened it would not support a request from Dominion Virginia Power to treat and release toxic water from coal ash ponds — a byproduct left over from when the power plant burned coal before 2003 — into the Potomac River.

Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality is reviewing Dominion’s request, and would ultimately monitor a toxic water treat and release process at the site. The agency did not extend the comment period.

“Dominion is running roughshod over regulations in Virginia…they’re acting like a very bad corporate citizen,” said Prince William County Board of Supervisors Chairman Corey Stewart. “No one ever thought Dominion and the state would collude to pollute the river.”

Stewart said he was “disgusted” with the thought of releasing water once contained in toxic ponds at the site of the power plant into Quantico Creek, which will flow into Potomac River and eventually the Chesapeake Bay.

The toxic wastewater ponds date back to the 1950s. Of the five ponds at Possum Point, only two are still wet. Coal ash was dug up from three dry ponds and placed into one of two wet ponds earlier this year.

Dominion’s ultimate goal: Pump all remaining water into one pond and treat, and then release the water. The remaining coal ash would be buried, and the pond would be capped off, similarly to the closure of a landfill.

“There’s everything that we believe, based on science, that this will work,” Virginia DEQ chief David Paylor told a room of concerned citizens and politicians who gathered last month at DEQ’s Northern Virginia headquarters in Woodbridge.

Virginia’s Water Control Board will meet January 14 in Glen Allen, Virginia to consider approving the plan to treat and release the toxic water.

Dominion says their company is following the permitting rules and timeline set by DEQ and the federal government.

“All these type of requests have a time limit imposed on them,” said Dominion spokesman Dan Genest. The EPA set forth new guidelines this year that state they want these types of ponds closed in three years, and we want to do so to protect the environment and water quality.”