Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, March 28, 1992                   TAG: 9203280294
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

A LIFELINE FOR VA. COALFIELDS?

Instead, at a news conference at Roanoke Regional Airport, Boucher suggested it might be better if the utility ran its new 765,000-volt line from the Virginia coalfields rather than bringing it in from West Virginia as planned.

A transmission line could be built from the coalfields along or next to existing Apco right of way to connect with Virginia Power Co.'s lines east of Apco's service area, Boucher said.

Boucher wants Apco and the State Corporation Commission to look at that possibility. He has asked the SCC not to issue a certificate of need for the new power line until it has studied his concerns and decided if Apco's proposal will advance "the broader economic interests of our region."

Boucher said he is not taking a position either for or against Apco's proposed line from Wyoming County, W.Va., to Cloverdale. He said he will wait for answers to his questions about the economic impact of the line and for completion of environmental studies before committing.

That means Boucher still is juggling the concerns of his constituents in Craig County, who say the line will harm the environment, and those in coalfield counties, where the construction of new mine-mouth power plants could mean hundreds of jobs and new tax income.

Carrie Crawford of New Castle said the congressman did mostly what she had expected, although she was hoping he would take a position against the line. Crawford has been the liaison between the Citizens for the Preservation of Craig County, an anti-power-line group, and Boucher.

Earlier this year, Boucher had told her he was going to have to look at the impact of the power line on his 9th Congressional District as a whole, Crawford said. "I can appreciate he's in a tough spot on this."

Boucher said he was concerned about the environmental impact of the proposed line - which has drawn citizens' protests in both Virginia and West Virginia. But he is determined, he said, that new power plants be built in the coalfields by independent companies, which would sell the power to Apco, Virginia Power and other utilities.

The trend of some electric utilities - including Virginia Power, which serves mostly eastern parts of the state - to buy power from independent producers rather than build their own plants "offers enormous opportunities for Southwest Virginia's coal-producing counties," Boucher said.

Boucher said his goal was to secure adequate transmission capacity for the roughly 2,000 megawatts of electric power that could be produced by coal-fired plants built near Southwest Virginia mines.

"Given the fact that each 100 megawatts of generating capacity produces $1.3 million in wages, $750,000 in real property taxes for the host locality and consumes 350,000 tons of coal each year, it is obvious that success in this venture would produce an entirely new industry for our region's coal producing counties," Boucher said.

Coastal Corp., parent of ANR Coal Co. of Roanoke, already has plans with a Finnish partner to build a coal-gasification power plant in Wise County. But that plant, which would be financed in part with a federal Department of Energy grant, depends on the availability of power lines.

While Apco has said 25 percent of its new line's capacity could be used by independent power producers, that amounts to only a fraction of the power that potentially could be produced by mine-mouth plants in Southwest Virginia alone, Boucher said. And nothing has been said about how the use of the line would be divided between Virginia and West Virginia producers, he said.

Apco Vice President Charles Simmons said the Roanoke-based utility would answer Boucher within a week or so and "hopefully, when he sees the answers to his questions, he'll come to the same conclusions we have."

Simmons said the company's needs are for new transmission lines, not additional generating capacity. Boucher suggested Friday that Apco might want to join independent producers in building new power plants in the Virginia coalfields.

Early in its planning, Apco had considered new plants as a possibility but rejected the idea, Simmons said. A plant big enough to feed the size of line it's planning to build would cost 10 times the $245 million the power line will cost, Simmons said.

Boucher agreed Friday that Norfolk Southern and other railroads would not be particularly enthusiastic about building power plants in the Virginia coalfields. One of the advantages of building plants there would be to avoid the cost of shipping coal to plants farther away.