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| Albright Power Plant - Albright, WV (photo taken June 18, 2012 during ALT section hike) |
The Albright power plant, built in 1952, is closing. The plant situated along the banks of the mighty Cheat River is a landmark along the Allegheny Trail route. For river rafters, the plant divided the milder, family friendlier section of the Cheat from Rowlesburg to Albright from the more dangerous rapids of the Cheat Canyon down stream. The plant is a coal burning "peaking facility." In February of 2011, several environmental groups, including WV Highlands Conservancy, WV Rivers Coalition, and Sierra Club of WV filed a lawsuit against MonPower over the high levels of coal waste (arsenic and mercury) into the Cheat River watershed. The lawsuit has resulted in a settlement. Citing the costs of complying with Mercury and Air Toxic Standards, First Energy decided to close three unscrubbed coal burning power plants in WV, Albright power plant, Willow Island, and Rivesville. Only days before the scheduled closing, a coal ash silo collapsed at the Albright plant. There was apparently some talk that the plant may be converted into a plant that burns biomas or natural gas, but it seems that the plant is just a dinosaur that's run its course. The environmentalist in me is, of course, relieved to see such outdated and inefficient forms of power die out. The humanist in me is concerned about the livelihoods of people in Preston County. Warning: soapbox time. If the politicians in this state could take the lumps of coal out of their collective ass and look toward updated and more efficient forms of energy, we could re-employ tens of thousands of WVians who have been stunted by the coal industry and revitalize hundreds of poverty stricken, drug infested ghost towns now serving as grave markers for the dying industry.
Coal is actually not "outdated and inefficient", not by a long shot. The environmental movement doesn't like the idea of burning any fossil fuels, but the fact remains that the United States has tremendous coal reserves and they should be used, and used properly. Coal can be burned in a clean way (look up fluidized bed combustion, as one example), a fact that many environmentalists conveniently overlook. Wind and solar power are great, and should indeed be a major part of the energy mix, but they will never provide baseload power since both are intermittent sources of energy. Just because a plant burns coal does not mean it is outdated and inefficient. One needs to study the actual thermal efficiency of a plant in order to make a claim as to whether or not it is efficient.
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