Gas-Fired Power Plant Proposed For Waldorf

Company Wants to Build On Kelson Ridge Site

One day after plans to build a coal-fired power plant in Indian Head were scrapped, a Silver Spring company filed applications for permits to construct a natural gas-fired generating plant in Waldorf.

Competitive Power Ventures announced its intention to build a $400 million plant in the St. Charles neighborhood in July, but Friday's filing to the Maryland Public Service Commission represents its first formal step toward winning state approval of the plan. The company has billed the proposed plant, which could be completed as early as summer 2011, as one of Maryland's most environmentally friendly facilities.

"This is a plant more typically built in California," which has some of the nation's strictest regulations for energy companies, "than in Maryland," project director Sharon K. Segner said this week. "If you were to compare this to a coal plant, it would likely be 50 to 100 times cleaner."

The 640-megawatt facility would provide power to about 600,000 homes, using state-of-the-art technology to control emissions. About 75 percent of electricity in the Washington region is supplied from coal plants, which produce large amounts of pollutants that are either released into the air or captured by emission-control devices.

Competitive Power Ventures formalized its plan just two weeks after a state report concluded that Maryland faces a critical shortage of electric power that could lead to rolling blackouts and mandatory use restrictions by 2011. A booming population and poor strategic planning, as well as an increase in average home size and the per-capita number of constantly running electric gadgets, is expected to increase electricity demand by 17 percent from 2005 to 2016.

The report called for a 1,500-megawatt increase in the amount of electricity available to Maryland residents, about 40 percent of which would be supplied by the proposed St. Charles plant.

News that the plant was moving forward softened local officials' disappointment over the announcement last week that another company's plans to build a power plant in Indian Head had fallen through because of financial concerns. The $1 billion plant, a 950-megawatt coal-fired facility, would have created at least 200 permanent jobs, project organizers from Alcoa Inc. said, but skyrocketing construction costs and other factors led the company to conclude that it was not economically viable.

The St. Charles plant would create about 25 permanent jobs, Segner said.

The commission will begin an extensive review of potential environmental impacts and site plans, a process that generally takes a year or more to complete. Competitive Power Ventures officials said they hope regulatory review of their project will require much less time because the same site was approved for a plant in 2001.

That project, known as the Kelson Ridge plant, was touted as Charles County's largest economic development initiative when it was proposed in 1999, with local officials estimating that it could bring in $31 million in tax revenue over 15 years. The proposal earned all necessary permits by 2001, but a downturn in the energy market led officials from Houston-based Reliant Energy to scrap the project the following year.

"The site has previously been permitted for a plant 2 1/2 times the size of this one," Segner said. "We expect this to be granted final approval because the site has already passed all the rigorous tests."

But environmentalists said they hope state officials will not rush through approval of the permits, warning that even natural gas plants can create major pollution problems. Charles County environmental activist Bonnie Bick said that on past projects, Competitive Power Ventures has been reluctant to spend the extra money needed to make projects more environmentally friendly.

"I know they've had to be pushed pretty hard to go to the cleanest end of the spectrum, and we plan on holding their feet to the fire," Bick said.

She added that she was pleased to hear about the demise of Alcoa's proposal for a coal-burning plant at Indian Head.

"We would have had to fight that really hard," she said.