Friends of Chesterfield say no to gas plant at Board of Supervisors Meeting

CHESTERFIELD COUNTY, Va. (WRIC) — Chesterfield County residents voiced their steadfast concern and direct opposition on Wednesday to a proposed energy plant that could potentially become a permanent fixture in their community.

The protest happened before the Board of Supervisors’ June 26 meeting. Once the meeting started at 6 p.m., things ramped up once again, with the message from residents clearly saying, “Not in our backyard.”

The message echoing in the chambers of the board of supervisors meeting.

“Companies like Dominion have been setting up shop in black and brown communities and it’s time for us to stop that. We know better, so we have to do better” said Nicole Martin, President of the Chesterfield National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

The direct and consistent objection to Dominion Energy’s proposed Chesterfield Energy Reliability Center continues to pour in months after the news of the plant was originally made public

The energy company has discussed building the 1,000-megawatt methane-gas power plant first near battery Brooke Parkway and then near the Dutch Gap Conservation area close to Coxendale road. Both locations are near the James River and surround several communities and neighborhoods.

In a statement the company said in part:

“ We have not made a decision to relocate the project to the power station property, and we are still considering both sites. I cannot overstate the vital importance of this project for the reliability of the power grid that serves more than 2.7 million customers in Virginia and North Carolina.. ”

Jason Woodby is an environmental science teacher with chesterfield county public schools and a founding member of the Friends of Chesterfield , leading the fight against the plant proposal.

“We as a as a group have had a meeting with Dominion,” Woodby said. “So, there’s a huge health risk with this plant within a three-mile radius of the plant. It’s a very high proportion people of color and low-income communities living around either of the plant locations that are still being considered by Dominion.”

Mason Manly is the Central Virginia Organizer for the Chesapeake Climate Action Network . He agrees with his fellow co-member and says that if more people knew about the science and the complicated health risk behind the plant, they might feel differently.

“We know that we can’t be building more fossil fuel infrastructure at this point in time. We’re way past that point. And the plan that’s proposed in Chesterfield is just a big part of Dominion’s plan to build out a huge amount of gas infrastructure that is a fossil fuel and is not sustainable,” Manly said.

During the meeting, group members got the chance to voice those same concerns with the Board of Supervisors during the public comment period, however, this topic was not on Wednesday’s agenda, and the board did not take action on it.

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