By: Shannon Heckt | Virginia Mercury
The State Corporation Commission has reasserted its approval of Dominion Energy’s Chesterfield Energy Reliability Center (CERC), after it denied multiple environmental advocacy groups’ appeal to reconsider the decision. Now, the groups are taking another tack to try and stop the project.
The gas peaker plant, a 944 megawatt facility, is slated to be used about 33% of the time to offset the strain on the grid during the hottest and coldest days of the year. The $1.47 billion project will be on the site of a former coal plant in Chesterfield just south of Richmond near the James River. It is anticipated that construction will begin in 2026 and be completed in 2029.
After the initial thumbs up by the commission in November, Appalachian Voices, Mothers Out Front and the Chesterfield County branch of the NAACP filed a petition for the SCC to reconsider their motion. The groups said the gas peaker plant would violate the Virginia Clean Economy Act and expose the surrounding communities to acts of environmental injustice.
The final order on the reconsideration stated that Dominion clearly laid out that a threat to reliability makes the CERC in the public’s interest and it does not violate the VCEA mandate to retire gas plants by 2045. The order also stated that the Department of Environmental Quality’s analysis of air quality impacts on the surrounding area was reasonable and did not show “disproportionate” impacts on the surrounding communities, which are largely composed of people of color and low-income residents.
Now, the Southern Environmental Law Center is filing an appeal on behalf of the three groups against the DEQ air permit for the project. Similar to the SCC reconsideration petition, the appeal suggests the approval of the air permit for the CERC project violated Virginia State Air Pollution Control Law, the Virginia Administrative Process Act, the Virginia Environmental Justice Act, and the federal Clean Air Act.
“We take our clients’ concerns and the spirit of the laws setting forth how to engage on issues when entering fenceline communities seriously. The state’s Environmental Justice Act is meant to be followed and directs agencies and regulators on how to properly assess requests such as this one from Dominion. It’s not just a box to be checked, but in this case, even that wasn’t attempted,” said SELC staff attorney Rachel James.
The department gave approval to the air permit on Dec. 19 last year. The appeal claims that DEQ did not properly analyze if the plant would disproportionately impact fenceline communities given the expected carbon emissions. It also claims that Dominion was not given proper emissions limits in the permit, among other concerns.
The appeal was filed in the Circuit Court for the City of Richmond.
