Late last week, after resolving a lawsuit by environmental and public health organizations, EPA officials announced that they have set a deadline for developing standards to limit mercury and other toxins emitted from coal-fired power plants by Nov. 16, 2011. According to the EPA, coal-fired plants in this country emit nearly 50 tons of mercury each year, or about a third of the nation’s total mercury emissions. Initially when the suit was filed last year, only 28% of coal plants used scrubbers for pollution controls. However, these scrubbers are creating another environmental problem: contaminated drinking water. According to an article in the New York Times, one of the biggest threats to our waterways is coal-fired power plants. Yet there are no federal regulations on the proper disposal of toxins from coal plants into waterways or landfills. The EPA announced earlier this week it will begin looking into the contamination effects of fly-ash, a coal by-product created when coal is burned.

In a report released by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation earlier this month, mercury emissions from the Old Dominion Electric Cooperative’s (ODEC) proposed coal-fired power plant for the Hampton Roads region in Surry County would further damage waterways leading into the Chesapeake Bay where state advisories are already posted due to the high levels of mercury contamination.

All of this comes on the heels of a report by the National Academy of Sciences stating that the annual cost of health issues related to emissions from coal-fired power plants was about $60 billion in the United States.

Surry County and the rest of the Chesapeake Bay community don’t need these kinds of “benefits”. Join us in saying NO to this plant.