I am writing from the lobby of the Marriot Hotel in Innsbrook, just outside Richmond. Its still three hours before the final hearing of the Department of Env. Quality on the Wise County Power Plant. There’s free wireless, and I’m in good company with CCAN’s campus organizer Tom Owens. But why am I here 4 hours before the hearing anyway? Paranoia!

For the last two hearings (before the State Corporation Commission and Department of Env. Quality), opponents to the power plant have arrived early in an attempt to sign up to speak, only to wait 2-5 hours to testify. Most recently in St. Paul, opponents to the power plant did not get called to speak until after 11:00 PM, despite signing up early. Now, there may be logical explanations in both cases. For the SCC, maybe there was an advanced sign-up we didn’t know about. For the DEQ hearing, Dominion beat us to the punch, getting supporters there early with the lure of a hospitality suite.

I’ve been assured by Cindy Bernt at DEQ that sign-up won’t start until 4:45, but I figure, better safe than sorry. And so we wait. And wait. More to come in a few hours.

The plant is required to use coal mined in Virginia, which will exacerbate the practice of mountaintop removal coal mining. Twenty-nine mountains in Virginia have already been destroyed by mountaintop removal mining, a form of coal mining that blows the top off of mountains to reach the seams of coal below.

The coal plant will spew out more than 5.6 million tons of global warming pollution each year, the equivalent to adding one million cars to the road. Virginia is one of the most susceptible states in the nation to global warming. It has 3,300 miles of tidal shoreline