Campaigns
BREF is actively confronting many different threats to the health of our planet and to the life that depends on it in the Blue Ridge region. Through direct action, community organizing, and other tactics, we will turn the tide of eco destruction, and build a new world. Read below for our current campaigns.
Bank of America
Bank of America is funding king coal. In the past Bank of America has been financially involved with the following companies:
o Alpha Natural Resources
o Cleco Corp
o Consol Energy (CNX)
o Dynegy
o Florida Power & Light
o Foundation Coal Holdings
o International Coal Group
o Massey Energy
o Peabody Energy
o WPS Resources
o Arch Coal
Bank of America supplied Massey Energy with a $175 million loan in support of their mountaintop removal practices. It provides major funding to Peabody Energy, the company responsible for contamination of Navajo and Hopi water sources throughout Northern Utah and Arizona. Peabody Energy also has plans for three new coal-fired plants that are being funded with your money by Bank of America.
The actions of Bank of America go directly against the Blue Ridge Earth First! principles. Direct actions have been taken around the country by other organizations such as Rising Tide and the Rainforest Action Network. Blue Ridge Earth First! intends to follow their lead and exercise an expression of opposition.
COAL
Dominion Power has recently received permits to construct another large dirty-coal fired power plant in Wise County, Virginia. The proposed plant’s “clean coal technology” is ultimately null and void considering that the plant is expected to not only burn coal, but also waste coal from mountain top removal spoils. The plans for pollution control include Circulating Fluidized Bed (CFB) technology, which uses water and limestone to filter exhaust gases before they rise through the top of the smoke stacks into the air. CFB technology is irrelevant when waste coal is burnt, because it pollutes over four times as much as regular coal and contains at least six times the amount of mercury.
A coal plant this size will require roughly 500,000- 800,000 (possibly up to 1 million) gallons of water a day to clean the plant. The water will be drawn from the Clinch River, which is already providing over 10 million gallons a day to a nearby plant in Carbo, Virginia.
The proposed site in Virginia City is less than four miles from the dirty coal plant in Carbo, which has been ranked as one of the top 10 polluters in the country. The Carbo plant is a dirty coal icon, notorious for unacceptable levels of pollution that destroy the water, air and soil qualities of Wise County. Another plant will not only add to pollution but will increase demand for mountain top removal mining, which causes irrevocable damage to the mountain and surrounding flora and fauna.
The impacts of the coal industry on Wise County are not only ecological. Hand in hand with the environmental destruction brought on by coal companies like Dominion is economic suppression. Wise is one of many coalfield counties that disprove the argument that dirty energy builds a healthy economy. A coal-based economy is not stable or sustainable because many towns are left for economic ruin after being ravaged by the coal industry when a plant is forced to close down or is no longer profitable to operate.
Claims that strip mines and coal plants are essential to the economy of the coalfield regions are out of touch with reality. With mountain top removal mining, expensive and sophisticated heavy machinery allows one man to accomplish what used to take ten. The Dominion plant will only offer seventy five full positions post-construction. If the plant burns waste coal there will be even fewer jobs for the community because waste coal is only provided by mountain top removal.
The presence of the coal plant in Carbo and proposed presence of one in Virginia City are threats to the lives within both the Wise community and the mountain ecosystem. One of the most biologically flourishing areas of the world is being environmentally and socially impoverished by companies like Dominion. Mountain top removal clogs streams, destroys forests, threatens biodiversity and forces coalfield residents into the unjust choice between income and well-being. For these reasons Blue Ridge Earth First! vehemently opposes any organization or individual that contributes to such practices.
NUCLEAR
The North Anna Nuclear Generating Station has been a concern for Louisa county residents for many years. Lately, the fears have intensified as Dominion has applied for Early Site Permits to expand the station from two reactors to four. Increasing the amount of nuclear reactivity at the site poses several threats to the community.
Environmentally speaking, the plant has continually jeopardized life in the North Anna river ecosystem which has been dammed since 1968. The river is dammed by Dominion in order to provide a cool water reservoir for cooling the plant and providing water for storage of radioactive waste. The cool lake water is cycled through the plant and then expelled many degrees hotter than the initial lake temperature causing the overall temperature of the lake to rise. A common effect of temperature increase in freshwater ecosystems like Lake Anna is a decrease in the amount of oxygen dissolved in the water, contributing to uninhabitable dead zones. With the addition of two more reactors, the temperature increase will be even more substantial. To the surrounding community and Blue Ridge Earth First! this is unacceptable.
In the recent push for nuclear power to take over as a “clean” energy source, politicians, investors and power companies alike have attempted to assure us that nuclear plants are safe now more than ever. A new allegiance to safety is hard to believe, especially when the persons and corporations in charge of safety want to expand nuclear plants when the facility already cannot safely store the waste produced. The underwater holding tanks that contain the most radioactive waste are filling up, and the new proposal is to let this waste decay in above ground casks that resemble silos. These silos are not properly buffered from the adjacent communities because there is no surrounding water to diffuse inevitable escaping radioactivity. The above-ground silos are also an extremely conspicuous target that the community fears will garner terrorist attention, especially because the North Anna plant supplies electricity to all of Northern Virginia and much of Washington, D.C..
A less material threat to the community is the increased isolation from the rest of the state Louisa County has suffered as its image shifts more and more to being a nuclear power hub. Because of Dominion’s nuclear activity in Louisa, the county has already been stigmatized as a potential nuclear waste ground, and additional reactors will only exaggerate this perception. Fears like this further the gap between energy producers and energy consumers, a problem Blue Ridge Earth First! seeks to abolish. Similar to the coalfield communities in Wise, Louisa County suffers from Dominon’s destructive social and environmental forces. In the eyes of Blue Ridge Earth First! Dominion’s negative impact on energy-producing communities demonstrates that dirty energy is not only detrimental to the earth, but also coerces these communities into social and economic poverty to satisfy the nation’s excessive energy needs.
WAL-MART
Local real-estate barons Jeannie Stosser and Georgia Ann Faulkenham of Llamas LLC. are conspiring with a Cleveland-based company called Fairmount Properties to rape and ruin the south side of Blacksburg with big-box retail development. BREF! would rather these individuals not profit off of the permanent destruction of our town’s unique character and intends to let them know how we feel.