PALMYRA, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – More than 100 people turned out at Fluvanna County High School on Tuesday night for an environmental open house run by Tenaska, the Nebraska-based company seeking to expand its Branch Rd. power plant in the county.

Many who attended expressed concerns about the lack of a specific study on the health impacts of the proposed Expedition Generating Station, as well as the fact the closest Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) air monitoring station is some 25 miles away at Albemarle High School.

The public engagement is a requirement for the 377-page Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) air permit submitted earlier this month to the DEQ.

Attendees were able to first enter the venue and find several stations set up where issues were addressed including air quality, water quality, community benefits, and an overall project overview.

There was also a station set up by the DEQ to answer questions about the permitting process.

About a half-hour into the evening, everyone was invited into the auditorium where Tenaska Vice President for Environmental Affairs Larry Carlson made a presentation outlining what the company submitted for the air quality permit. He then held a question-and-answer session with the audience.

“The agency will thoroughly review whether the plant can meet stringent air quality standards under the U.S. Clean Air Act,” Tenaska said in a statement. “These standards are designed to protect the most vulnerable members of society, including the elderly, children and people with asthma. Preliminary air modeling of both Expedition and the existing Tenaska power plant show the combined emissions of these facilities are well below the federal limits.”

Expedition will also be required to submit quarterly air emissions monitoring reports, semi-annual monitoring and deviation reports, annual compliance certification and annual emission inventory to DEQ, as well as quarterly Continuous Emissions Monitoring Systems data to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“As part of the application, we have to do what’s called the Best Available Control Technology analysis, and that’s on a case-by-case, project-by-project basis and based on our uncontrolled emissions, we do that analysis and we get to an answer of this is what Best Available Control Technology should be,” Carlson said. “Over 95% of the entire emissions come out the two combined-cycle combustion turbine stacks, and so most of the control equipment is associated with those two systems.

“The primary ones are a selective catalytic reduction system for nitrogen oxides, and then an oxidation catalyst for carbon monoxide in volatile organic compounds, and we’ll have those in the presentation. Those act and perform very similar to a catalytic oxidizer on motor vehicles, so as emissions to through the catalyst they get oxidized to other inert compounds of mostly nitrogen, CO2, and water.”

He showed the numbers of the emissions of each pollutant the plant would produce, and how the BACTs on each aspect of the plant would bring the pollutants down below U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards.

Carlson also showed a table also showing emissions for the combined plants at percentages also below EPA standards.

For some, being below EPA standards is not enough. Cancer patient Tammy, during the Q&A session, attributed her condition to living two-and-a-half miles from the existing plant.

“I have an incurable cancer,” Tammy said. “There are five major causes of cancer: Smoking. I have never been a smoker; Drinking. I have never done alcohol; There is obesity I am not obese; There is genetic. I have done the testing and my cancer is not genetic; The last one is environmental.

“There was a test that was done to me in 2022 that tells how much pollutant is in my bloodstream and the normal range is zero to zero-point-five,” she said. “Mine was 13…. 13… not 1.3.

“I want you to tell me if any of you who are involved with this can look at me and tell me, I know you have all these regulations and all that stuff, we know that combined with all the rest of it that is around here,” she said. “I want you to look at me and tell me you did not contribute to my cancer.”

Power plant opponents have been pointing to a study commissioned by the Southern Environmental Law Center by the Dominici Lab at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health to examine the impacts of adding a second gas plant to that region.

The study contends four million people would see increased air pollution in central Virginia, especially in Fluvanna County, including Lake Monticello and Palmyra. It claims the expanded plant would be responsible for 2-3 premature deaths annually, and increase health impacts including heart attacks, strokes, asthma attacks, and pneumonia due to fine particle matter exposure.

“They use methodologies and models that are not approved by the EPA or DEQ when we submit an application for a permit,” Carlson said. “And we don’t believe their methodologies and models are an appropriate approximation of health impacts from particulate matter.”

Carlson said the EPA has done the work regarding health impacts based on hundreds of studies while the Harvard study only uses a few.

Some at the meeting were concerned about monitoring the air quality because the closest DEQ air monitoring station to the rural Fluvanna plant is at Albemarle High School.

A DEQ representative at the meeting said compliance is monitored by first making sure the emissions from the plant are in compliance.

That data is collected by monitors installed at the plant that record data every 15 seconds and generate hourly reports based on averages.

That representative told Cville Right Now that data is run through a shed dispersing model that tells how much emission is happening at places like Lake Monticello.

Carlson said they submitted the initial application and the DEQ came back at them with four questions that they sent replies to.

The DEQ rep told Cville Right Now there must be a sound scientific basis to deny any part or all of the permit, and evaluation is done strictly in compliance with the law.

The PSD air permit process after application is DEQ review, which is where the DEQ is now.

After that, the DEQ will draw up a draft permit that will be followed by a DEQ public briefing and comment period, then a public hearing.

After that public hearing is a DEQ review of those public comments, then another public hearing, then a final decision.

A similar process will occur with a water quality permit that Carlson told Cville Right Now will be filed sometime late summer or early fall.

As it stands now, construction on any approved power plant would be late 2027 at the earliest, and the plant would begin operation in late 2031 at the earliest.