Coal Blooded: Putting Profits Before People

DOMINIONDominion, the company with the sixth-worst CEJP score in this report, owns eleven coalpower plants in Virginia, West Virginia, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Indiana — of whichfour earned environmental justice performance grades of F, and three more earned a“D.” Dominion’s State Line plant in Hammond, Indiana (located immediately across thestate border from Chicago’s South Side) received the fifth-worst environmental justiceperformance score of all 378 plants in this report, earning it a spot on the Top 12 EJOffenders. Dominion recently announced that the State Line Plant will be closing thisyear.Like other energy companies, Dominion promotes its image as an environmentallyresponsible company. The company’s corporate environmental policy states thatDominion will “minimize, mitigate or restore any adverse environmental impacts causedby our operations,” and its annual report highlights “dramatic” reductions in SO 2 andNO X emissions from its power plants and $3.7 billion that Dominion has allocated tospend on “environmental improvements” between 2010-15 (both of which are largelythe result of Clean Air Act mandates). 86However, Dominion is also one of the only major power companies in the United Statesthat is currently moving ahead with construction of a new coal-fired power plant: the585-MW Wise County plant in western Virginia. This project has been met with intenseopposition since its beginning: several environmental groups filed an unsuccessful legalchallenge to the proposal in 2007; activists delivered a petition with over 42,000signatures opposing the plant at Dominion’s shareholder meeting in 2008; and a total of24 people were arrested at two separate protests for blockading the plant’sconstruction site and Dominion’s headquarters in the summer of 2008. 87888990 Despitethese protests, Dominion is moving ahead with construction, and expects to make thenew coal plant active in 2012.Page | 37