ST. CHARLES DEVELOPER, American Community Properties Trust (ACPT) and Competitive Power Ventures (CPV) announced Tuesday plans to build a 600 megawatt, natural gas-fired, combined cycle power plant on Billingsly Road near the Charles County Landfill.
CPV presented their plans for the St. Charles plant to the Charles County Board of Commissioners. The Board was impressed with the technology involved in the plant, CPV’s attention to our county environmental concerns and the income the plant could generate for the county.
Board President, Commissioner F. Wayne Cooper (D) expects that CPV St. Charles will generate about $2 million in annual tax revenue when it’s operational and $125 million in local revenue during the construction phase. He described the plant’s smokestacks as “as high as the power lines or smaller” and the emissions as “difficult to notice”.
CPV’s statement on Tuesday described the finished project as “one of the cleanest natural gas facilities ever built in Maryland and the Washington DC area. The plant’s innovative design will prevent it from being a strain on local water resources by employing a cooling system that requires only minimal groundwater.” According to Cooper, the Commissioners expressed to CPV their hope that the plant would instead use ‘grey’ water from a nearby wastewater treatment plant.
Commissioner Reuben B. Collins II (D – district 3) was impressed by the CPV’s recognition of county environmental concerns and willingness to address them. Commissioner Gary V. Hodge (D – district 4) described CPV’s new Front Royal, Virginia plant as “one of the 10 cleanest power plants in the U.S.” He also explained that the site has long been slated for a power plant.
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| Existing structures in the neighborhood of the future CPV St. Charles. Photos by Heather Bartlett. |
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CPV St. Charles will be built on a 77 acre plot which was previously fully permitted by another power company. The site is adjacent to Aggregate Industries’ asphalt plant and the Charles County Landfill. The site’s proximity to high tension power lines and the natural gas pipeline (which runs underground along Billingsly Road) minimizes the amount of construction needed.
CPV also recently received priority rights to tie the plant directly into the region’s power grid. This may give CPV St. Charles a time and cost advantage over other proposed power plants in the metropolitan Washington DC area.
According to Cooper, local power company SMECO is not, at this time, slated to purchase power from the new plant, so it may not actually power Charles County homes. However, CPV did report it will meet with SMECO in the near future.
In Tuesday’s statement, Sharon K. Segner, director of the CPV St. Charles project said, “We will be opening an office in Charles County soon and we look forward to talking with community members about the facility, the cutting edge technologies we employ, and the advantages of environmentally-responsible natural gas generation.”
The office is scheduled to open in September, and public input opportunities will begin shortly thereafter. The environmental review and permit issue process will