Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 29, 1990 TAG: 9005260217
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE SHENANDOAH BUREAU
DATELINE: SNOWDEN LENGTH: Long
Big, softball-sized purple blossoms. Somewhere beyond the ridgeline is the James River, carving its way through the Blue Ridge.
This is a wilderness.
A Class 1 wilderness - the only one in the Jefferson National Forest.
Established by an act of Congress on Jan. 3, 1975, it is a wilderness for the ages, protected from chain saws, factories and mountain bikes.
Class 1 wilderness areas are protected by the U.S. Forest Service's most restrictive regulations.
Protected, in particular, from pollutants like those that might be released by a proposed coal-fired cogeneration plant for Buena Vista, 10 miles away.
It's the law.
In a Class 1 wilderness, the standards for particulates, sulfur dioxides and nitrogen oxide - all pollutants created by burning coal - are a fraction of what is allowed in other areas, said Don Shepherd, regional director for the state Department of Air Pollution Control.
Shepherd has said satisfying the air-quality standards set for the wilderness may be the toughest test facing the proposed 60-megawatt plant, which must win state air- and water-quality permits before construction can begin.
Cogeneration plants supply both electrical power to utilities and steam to an industrial host. The Buena Vista plant would provide electricity to Virginia Power and excess steam would be channeled to an existing Georgia-Bonded Fibers plant about 300 yards away from the proposed site.
The plant has been the center of recent controversy, with opponents saying it will lead to increased pollution and health problems in the Rockbridge County area.
Developers counter by explaining that the plant will use top-notch pollution control equipment, and backers in Buena Vista cite the tax revenue it will generate.
Taxes from the cogeneration plant figure heavily into plans to build a $50 million-plus flood wall in Buena Vista, which was soaked by floodwaters in 1969 and 1985.
Why a wilderness?
The James River Face is 8,800 acres straddling the Rockbridge-Bedford County border, where the James River cuts through the Blue Ridge on its eastward journey. Steep, rocky and studded with twisted trees, much of it has always been ignored even by loggers, said William Baggett, an assistant ranger with the Glenwood District Ranger's Office at Natural Bridge Station.
There are other wilderness areas in the vicinity of Buena Vista, but only the James River Face was designated by Congress as a Class 1, said forest service officials.
Don Blackburn, a staff officer at Jefferson National Forest headquarters in Roanoke, said he wasn't 3 1 FACE Face sure what made the James River Face different.
"We've looked through the legislative act itself," said Blackburn. ". . . I don't know what the reasoning would have been."
Steve Richards, a Rockbridge County resident who belongs to several environmental groups, said all proposed wilderness areas in the region were slated to be Class 1 until industries began to complain about the strict pollution requirements.
After the James River Face was designated a Class 1, "Congress compromised," Richards said. Richards is a member of the citizen's group Clean Air for Rockbridge - which opposes the cogeneration plant - as well as the Environmental Defense Fund and The Nature Conservancy.
Some pollution is permitted in the James River Face area from new industry, but not much, according to Shepherd.
Hadson Corp. - which is seeking to build the Buena Vista cogeneration plant in partnership with Westmoreland Energy Inc. of Charlottesville - has just concluded a year's worth of testing, in part to determine if winds will blow coal smoke toward the James River Face.
Test data is still being tabulated, but Andrew Shea, spokesman for the plant developers, has said he believes the plant will meet the wilderness area's tough air-quality standards.
"We haven't seen any kind of results to confirm or dispute that," said Shepherd. "I'm not surprised that they would say that."
Shepherd said the data will be fed into a computer model to estimate the plant's environmental impact.
Michael Lonergan, president of Clean Air for Rockbridge, was critical of the computer model, however.
Even though the computer program has been adapted to evaluate mountainous terrain, he said, it assumes there are gaps in the mountains for pollutants to drift through. In the Buena Vista area, said Lonergan, the mountains are nearly a wall.
Shepherd, however, said the computer model being used "was tested in the real world. It errs on the side of safety."
Lonergan, who has a view of the wilderness from his house nine miles away, also said he believes pollution from industries outside the county already has tainted the James River Face.
"All I can see," Londergan said recently as he looked outside his window toward the wilderness, "is a gray-covered splotch."
Some signs of man
On a recent five-hour hike through the southern portions of the wilderness, Baggett and two journalists had the trails to themselves.
What they saw was a landscape littered with multi-ton rocks and paper-thin shale, thickets of blooming rhododendron and mountain laurel, scores of red maples and chestnut oaks, a thick bubbly puddle known as Sulfur Springs and a pine tree scraped by a deer's antlers.
Plus a little trash.
"Signs of man," sighed Baggett, stooping to pick up an aluminum can. Someone had left it in the Devil's Marbleyard, an acre or so of boulders scattered down a mountainside.
"Some people like to come out on this ledge and sit and meditate, relax," explained Baggett, who had chosen the spot for a lunch break.
Richards, who has camped in the James River Face, said portions of the wilderness are virtually untouched by man. "There is a significant region above the James River itself that is very wild; it's never been cut or trampled on at all," he said.
Forest service literature said the wilderness is intended to provide "primitive recreation with freedom from the intrusion of unnatural sights, sounds and odors."
Banned from the wilderness are cars, motorcycles, even chain saws - except under special circumstances, such as the clearing away of trees toppled by Hurricane Hugo, Baggett said.
Permitted is hiking, hunting, horse travel on designated trails and camping.
There is another wilderness north of Buena Vista - St. Mary's Wilderness, just past the Rockbridge-Augusta County line - as well as the Thunder Ridge Wilderness south of the James River Face, for which the air-quality standards are not as strict, said forest service officials.
Shepherd said a decision may not be made on the cogeneration plant air permit until October or November.
by CNB