Local officials voiced strong opposition Friday to a state permit that would allow the Mirant Company to merge smokestacks at its Alexandria coal-fired plant, the latest battle in the city’s years-long effort to impose stricter pollution-control requirements on the company.
“The facts and the science demonstrate that this permit does not adequately protect the public health,” Alexandria City Councilman Paul Smedberg said.
The meeting, hosted by the State Department of Environmental Quality and the citizen-run State Air Pollution Control Board, marked the final public comment session before the board meets on Feb. 7 to consider the controversial permit.
Mirant has said that merging its five smokestacks into two would help the environment because the emissions would move faster, shoot higher into the air and disperse better.
Alexandria officials have said the project would lead to higher production and more pollution.
Mirant began construction on the project in August without waiting for a board decision on whether a permit was needed for the work. In September, the board ordered the company to halt construction and seek a permit.
City officials expressed their frustration with what they said is a draft permit that fails to meet Virginia’s own air quality standards, and with what Vice Mayor Del Pepper called “the agency’s clear contempt for the specific instructions given by the board.”
The draft permit does not impose direct limits on the plant’s emissions of fine particulate matter, a type of pollution that is particularly harmful to humans and that is regulated by Virginia law.
