By Philip Rucker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 11, 2007; SM01
To some residents of rural Cobb Neck in Charles County, the power plant in Morgantown has long been a scourge. Since they were erected in 1970, the plant's twin smokestacks have, well, clouded the picturesque setting along the Potomac River.
But the plant's latest proposals have residents fuming.
Mirant Corp., the global energy firm that owns the plant, hopes to begin importing coal to fire the generators from offshore suppliers on large barges that would travel up the Potomac. The plant now receives coal from the northern Appalachian Mountains by rail lines.
Mirant also plans to erect a third tower -- called a wet scrubber -- which the company said would lower the plant's chemical emissions to comply with Maryland's Healthy Air Act of 2006.
The Maryland Public Service Commission is considering Mirant's proposals. Mirant says the plans are environmentally sound, but many of Cobb Neck's approximately 2,000 residents think otherwise. They say the proposals threaten to harm the environment in southern Charles.
"It would definitely be an additional blight on the view," Ken Robinson, president of the Swan Point Property Owners Association, said one recent morning as he and a few neighbors sat in the living room of his waterfront house and peered out the windows at the Potomac.
A bald eagle flew by, and off in the distance, the plant's twin towers were huffing and puffing. If the expansion proposal is approved, Robinson said, there will be a bigger cloud over the plant. "It's going to basically look like Hiroshima," he said.
The plant is a significant economic engine for Charles. It produces about 1,500 megawatts of power annually, enough power to serve 1.5 million homes, according to Mirant. The plant employs 154 workers. If the wet scrubber project is approved, the plant would need to hire an additional 20 workers to operate and maintain the tower, spokeswoman Misty Allen said.
Plans call for building a 400-foot wet scrubber stack that would have two absorber towers. The wet scrubber would be capable of removing more chemical pollutants than the existing twin towers.
The plant would keep the existing towers in place and use them as a bypass for when the wet scrubber stack is not in service, Allen said.
"The wet scrubber simply provides you the better environmental reductions," Allen said.
The plant would require about 1.5 million gallons of water each day to scrub the inside of the tower, more than the amount of water used daily by La Plata, population 8,500.
The Charles commissioners recently wrote to the Maryland Department of the Environment expressing concern about the proposed water usage, and the Charles state legislative delegation is planning to meet with residents in Swan Point on Saturday.
The plant is just south of the Gov. Harry Nice Bridge, which carries motorists on Route 301 between Southern Maryland and Virginia's King George County.
"With the wet scrubbers, there's a water vapor cloud 24 hours a day, seven days a week," said Joe Martin, a Swan Point resident and head of the Cobb Neck Citizens Alliance. "You're going to have this huge water vapor cloud spewing out over the bridge."
Residents fear that the wet scrubber tower will create a blight for people crossing into Maryland, as will barges carrying coal up the Potomac.
Delivering coal on barges allows Mirant to purchase coal from vendors in Indonesia or South America. The coal could be cheaper than that from the Appalachian Mountains.
"It will allow us to have more flexibility in our transportation costs and coal supplies," Allen said.
The barge proposal includes building a 500-by-50-foot concrete loading dock 385 feet offshore. The loading facility would be covered, Allen said, but the barges carrying 15,000 to 20,000 tons of coal up the Potomac would not be.
"Just as rail cars transporting coal are uncovered, the coal barge will not be covered. The risk of coal falling or blowing off the barge into the river is negligible," Mirant spokeswoman Felicia Browder said in a prepared statement.
But all it would take is one wrong turn for the barge to tip and spill coal into the river, residents said.
"A coal barge going up a water trail is not exactly what John Smith had in mind going up the Potomac River," Robinson said, referring to recent designations of routes on the Potomac and other area waterways as historic trails.
Former state delegate W. Daniel Mayer, a Republican who lives in Swan Point, is helping his neighbors fight Mirant. He wants Mirant to consider the environmental and economic impact its proposals could have on the community.
"We need our neighbor here to clean up their act," Mayer said. "We're not trying to get rid of them. We're just trying to get them to work with us."
