Dominion, Chesterfield County weigh ‘site suitability’ for natural gas plant proposal

Attendees at a rally against Dominion's proposed natural gas plant. (Charlie Paullin/Virginia Mercury)

Aliya Farooq lives in Chesterfield County within a three-mile radius of a proposed site of a natural gas-fueled electricity generation plant, a potential source of air toxins she’s concerned about after 20 years of living with her late in-laws, who had lung issues.

She, her physician husband and their kids saw the toll of those family members who had to breathe oxygen through a machine with wires, she said in an interview. There wasn’t much they could do to help their loved ones, Farooq said, but she doesn’t want her neighbors dealing with the same problems.

“We can’t see what the air we’re breathing really contains, but we all have enough knowledge through science to know that if there is a gas plant or a coal plant in the vicinity of a few miles within our residents that there are certain particles that we’re breathing in that can cause a lot of very bad health issues,” Farooq said.

The comments from Farooq, who is chairwoman of Virginia Interfaith Power & Light and a member of the Virginia Council on Environmental Justice, came before a June 26 Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors meeting in which other residents spoke against Dominion Energy’s request to site the Chesterfield Energy Reliability Center, the natural gas plant initially intended to be located on Battery Brooke Parkway, in the locality.

The local pushback has bubbled up during the local site suitability process Dominion must go through before receiving an air permit from the Department of Environmental Quality and a certificate of public convenience and necessity from the State Corporation Commission. Members of the environmental and ratepayer advocacy community fear that public participation in the process may be circumvented, if there’s a possibility the new natural gas plant could be built at the site of a former coal plant.

Meanwhile, Dominion remains steadfast in maintaining that the project, expected to come online in 2028 and supply up to 1,000 megawatts of electricity, is “critical” to meet the forecasted 5% annual increase in grid demand, largely coming from data centers.

The plant is being proposed as part of long-term plans, which contain goals for small modular reactors and other new generation sources, 90% of which are renewable through offshore wind, solar and long duration energy storage batteries.

Dominion is beholden to the Virginia Clean Economy Act, a policy that aims to decarbonize the grid by mid-century, but the state’s largest utility is allowed to ask regulators to keep a fossil-fuel generation source online past 2045 if there a concern over having enough reliable electricity sources, which may be the case with renewables that aren’t paired with storage.

“Where we have come to here at this point, what took 115 years for our company to accomplish and build, we have to do again in just 15 years, we have to double our generation capability, power generation capability by 2039,” Emil Avram , vice president of business development at Dominion Energy, said in an interview. “We wouldn’t build this facility if we didn’t think it was needed.”

Site suitability

The current issue of site suitability can be traced back to a 2020 ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals Fourth Circuit that overturned an air permit approval by the State Air Pollution Control Board for the since-canceled Atlantic Coast Pipeline compressor station in Union Hill.

Approving the permit in the community of Black people — who are more susceptible to asthma , which can be exacerbated by fossil fuel emissions, including particulate matter 2.5 — reflected a lack of environmental justice, or EJ, considerations, the court said, which  should’ve been done before the board issued the permit.

The State Air Pollution Control Board then denied a separate air permit for Mountain Valley Pipeline’s proposed compressor station in Pittsylvania County in 2021, because of the disproportionate harm that the project would have posed to Black citizens of the community. In 2022, Virginia law changed, shifting the authority to approve air permits from the citizen-appointed State Air Pollution Control Board to the administratively-run DEQ.

Then came the site suitability form, created by DEQ following the 2022 law change to assist localities in providing the agency a determination of if a site is suitable for development or not. For Dominion’s newest natural gas plant proposal, Chesterfield County officials have not completed the form, saying they aren’t required to do so.

For other projects, the form has never been sent to DEQ incomplete before, an agency spokeswoman told the Mercury, because an alternative written indication on site suitability can be provided. The spokeswoman confirmed that the form is not required to be filled out so long as that alternative written indication is sent.

Battery Brooke Parkway or Coxendale Road

Simultaneously happening alongside the dispute over the site suitability is a challenge over the locality’s’ stance that a conditional use permit at Dominion’s former coal plant site on Coxendale Road could be used for the new proposal.

The former coal plant site received a conditional use permit from the county in 2010, which localities may grant to project developers for a site that may be outside of what local zoning regulations allow but adds mitigation measures through certain terms, or conditions, that must be met.

On April 5, Andrew Gillies, director of Chesterfield County’s planning department, wrote a zoning determination to Dominion stating that the conditional use permit for the former coal plant at Coxendale Road would apply to the new natural gas plant. Allowing the conditional use permit to be used for a new facility would prevent the need for the county to hold a public hearing about the project.

“From solely a land use question, the answer in this case is [that] current zoning permits the project at this site and there is no further action needed from the county,”  County Administrator Joseph Casey told supervisors at the June 26 meeting. Casey said he also sent a letter to DEQ and SCC requesting further public hearings be held in Chesterfield County.

But Evan Johns, an attorney with Appalachian Mountain Advocates, wrote in an appeal that the new proposal has specific criteria, such as 170-foot smoke stacks, that are different from the  150-foot height restrictions imposed by local ordinances. The previous conditional use permit does not account for the potential new stacks and shouldn’t be applicable, Johns argued.

“Interpreting a 2010 grant of conditional use to allow for a completely new and different facility to be built over a decade later would conflict with the nature and purpose of conditional uses,” Johns wrote.

Because of that appeal, which is considered pending litigation that the Board of Zoning Appeals took no action on  at a meeting Wednesday, a Chesterfield County spokesman declined to say why the locality didn’t complete the site suitability form.

At the June 26 Board of Supervisors meeting, residents of the community, found by the federal government’s EJ screening to be home to minorities and low-income households, raised concerns over the plant. Another audience member shouted “build the gas plant.” Board Chairman James Holland, after listening to the comments, reiterated statements from Casey saying that future DEQ and SCC public hearings should be held in the county.

“We will work with Dominion and DEQ to find a site that’s appropriate,” Holland added.

The board would be “shirking” their responsibility if they didn’t have a public hearing to inform a vote on determining whether a site is suitable or not, Southern Environmental Law Center Attorney Rachel James said in an interview. James sent the county a letter requesting a public hearing.

Attempts to reach the five board of supervisors members for further comment were unsuccessful.

Dominion, who has to make a decision on which location they want before any air permit review from DEQ proceeds, said one reason they are exploring the former coal plant site — which already has two natural gas firing combustion turbines on it — is because of the existing transmission infrastructure in place there. The  project’s estimated cost remains unknown and likely won’t be disclosed until the utility submits its certificate of public convenience and necessity with the SCC, Dominion’s Avram said.

“We would like to make a decision sooner than later because the clock is ticking,” Avram said, adding that the utility has hosted community meetings. “We have listened to the concerns from various organizations from the county itself, and we’ve incorporated that into our planning process. We’re not circumventing any public process. We are very carefully listening and responding and reacting to public input.”

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