Fluvanna Board Fails Residents and Sides with Tenaska
Fluvanna and Central Virginia residents gather to participate in the Tenaska public hearing
March 18 saw a major failure by the Fluvanna Board of Supervisors after months of advocacy by residents of Fluvanna County and Central Virginia who have been fighting against a massive gas-fired power plant expansion proposed for the County, when the Fluvanna Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 in favour of Nebraska-based energy corporation Tenaska to massively increase its existing footprint in the County. In doing so, it overturned a decision of its own Planning Commission that the proposal significantly contradicted objectives of the County’s Comprehensive Plan, changed its zoning code to allow Tenaska to raise the height of its smokestacks up to 230 feet, and awarded a Special Use Permit for the project to go ahead.
Despite this decision by the Board, the process has seen some major victories for grassroots advocacy in Central Virginia. After a sudden announcement last August that Tenaska had applied for an SUP to build a 1.5 GW facility across from its existing plant, about which the Board had been under a Non-Disclosure Agreement, Fluvanna residents sprang into action, taking lessons learned by opponents of the first plant proposal 20 years ago. The organizing led by residents and partners to the Fluvanna Horizons Alliance created an explosion of civic engagement, with Fluvanna residents from all backgrounds and of all ages getting involved in activism and policy advocacy for the first time.
C3 Green Teen Alliance member Will Murdoch speaks before Fluvanna Board of Supervisors
Among the Fluvanna residents commenting at the public hearing was C3’s former intern Will Murdoch, who spoke with a fierce gravitas that – like many young climate activists – he has been forced to acquire while fighting for his generation’s future.
“Climate change is not a future issue, it is a present phenomenon that is already and will only become more prominently the defining issue of our lives, especially for youth like myself. Allowing this plant to be built in our community is not only going back on the promises outlined in the comprehensive plan, it is sending a message that Fluvanna is willing to be complicit in the perpetuation of practices that are directly detrimental to the health of our communities and the stability of our world”
It is shameful that the Board of Supervisors merely commented on feeling proud of the youth who spoke up without engaging in the very real substance of their comments. Indeed, no discussion occurred between supervisors of the relationship between new gas-fired infrastructure and climate change.
Heroic efforts by local organizers ensured that both the community and Fluvanna’s Planning Commission had access to health impact data that Tenaska would not provide, and that decision makers heard directly from affected residents, ultimately resulting in the unanimous vote in February by the Planning Commission to recommend the Board of Supervisors deny the SUP. Time and time again during public meetings local residents’ concerns were stonewalled by Tenaska’s representatives, who spoke over residents attempting to have their concerns about traffic, noise, environmental impact and health both heard and addressed. Now, the Board of Supervisors has sided with Tenaska in dismissing these concerns, especially around health and environmental impacts.
Fluvanna County attorneys seek guidance from Tenaska representatives on SUP conditions
This plant will lock our region into decades of additional fossil fuel pollution, with impacts on air quality, water resources, climate goals, and public health that directly affect 4 million people in Central Virginia and beyond. A health impact study conducted by a Harvard University research lab found that the proposed plant expansion could result in 2-3 premature deaths per year in the area around the plant, with the impacts of long-term exposure to additional pollution reaching beyond Fluvanna and into neighboring counties across Central Virginia, from Albemarle and Greene to Dinwiddie and Petersburg. Representatives from these neighboring areas made their concerns known ahead of last night’s vote, with Charlottesville City Council passing an official resolution to send a letter expressing their concern about the proposal to Fluvanna’s Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors, and multiple elected representatives from Albemarle, Richmond and Chesterfield signing on to a joint letter sent to the Board.
Tenaska’s project is not the solution Virginia residents need for energy security, despite their messaging during presentations to leadership and missives to the community. Instead, it’s part of a broader fossil-fuel infrastructure buildout being justified by data center demand. 15GW of gas-fired power plant expansion is being proposed across Virginia explicitly in order to meet Dominion’s forecasted energy demands from data centers, with proposals such as Tenaska’s in Fluvanna having been flagged for fast-tracked PJM interconnection in order to serve these demands.
If this amount of gas-powered infrastructure is built, it would in essence turn the 16GW of renewable energy called for in the Virginia Clean Economy Act into offsets for data centers, rather than an energy transition.
What happens now?
While this vote by the Board of Supervisors is a major blow, the fight does not end here. C3 and our partners remain committed to pursuing all avenues of opposition against this project, and we will be reaching out to our network with next steps in the near future.
For now, we’ll leave you with Will Murdoch’s closing remarks to the Board: “In refusing to allow the plant’s construction in our community, we are not only securing a healthier, cleaner future with a higher quality of life for our county, but also refusing to aid and abet shortsighted actions that contribute to irreversible damage to our world.”
To hear more on the background to this fight, watch this short documentary by C3 teen intern and Green Teen Alliance member Eshaan Mital in collaboration with Lighthouse Theater.
