www.roanoke.com

Over at Bacon's Rebellion, Jim Bacon muses about the opposition to Dominion's proposed coal-burning power plant in Wise County, and wonders why Dominion's customers aren't upset about the higher rates the plant will cost them:

"Dominion plans to spend $1.8 billion on construction, and the SCC is granting the utility a 12.12 percent return on equity. As I observed last year, the project was far more expensive on a cost-per-KW-hour basis than other clean-coal facilities on the drawing boards around the country. Among the more obvious inefficiencies is the legislative requirement to buy expensive Virginia coal, and the necessity of wheeling the electric power across the entire state, suffering transmission losses along the way.

"I estimated last year that Dominion rate payers could wind up paying $650 million more than they would otherwise -- and that was based on a $1.6 billion cost figure, which has somehow moved up to $1.8 billion. I am stupefied that not a single public figure in Virginia has raised a fuss. Are there no populists among us anymore?"

I find it interesting that he complains about the location of the plant. The location - very near two other major polluting power plants - is the main reason we oppose it.

But what do you think would happen if Dominion proposed plopping those big, belching smokestacks in NoVa - or near enough to pollute Richmond, for that matter?

Something tells me the plant would face somewhat higher regulatory hurdles.