Published: June 25, 2006 09:49 pm         

ARC working on energy completion

Energy and roads are in the vanguard of the Appalachian Regional Commission’s remaining goals as the 1960s-era agency trudges to the finish line.

Not that anyone within the ARC is saying its on its final leg.

Yet, when the 13-state region attains economic parity with the rest of America, “it’s time for us to close our doors,” alternate co-chair Richard Peltz said.

“And we’re getting closer and closer,” he said.

Even with its successes since the ARC came on board in President Lyndon B. Johnson’s war against poverty in 1965, the ARC feels it has some major objectives.

In its latest venture, the ARC is advancing an energy initiative, fully aware it lacks the thrust — and dollar clout — of the bigger agencies, such as Department of Energy, the co-chair says.

“Energy self-sufficiency would have been nice to have done, for that matter,” Peltz said.

Given an array of resources — coal, gas, oil, wind, solar and bio-mass opportunities — the possibilities seem endless, he said.

Within a year, Peltz quoted the DOE, an enzyme will be available to convert woody pulp and switch grass into bio-fuels.

“What we’re asking ourselves, from an ARC perspective, what can we do to create jobs through energy?” he asked.

“What are the gaps out there? What are the other places we can fill? How can we augment or complement what the DOE is doing or what the U.S. Department of Agriculture is doing? And how can we work with the states?”

Peltz said the initiative launched last year by Gov. Joe Manchin for a coal conversion facility could “very well be our answer” to expanding coal’s uses and help America wean itself off foreign oil.

“We’re producing more coal now than we were a couple of years ago,” he said.

“But the opportunity to take this and create more jobs with the use of our coal, and keeping it here in this neck of the woods, would be phenomenal.”

Windmill-generated electricity is a source of contention in Greenbrier County. Environmentalists and landowners oppose the behemoths in public view, but others tout them as a viable source of energy.

“If you go to California, the Palm Springs area, go across the pass there, you see literally thousands of these windmills in one place,” Peltz said.

“It does kind of impact your view of them. There are wind farms all over the place.”

As the nation pushes to find alternate energy sources, he said, “we’re going to have to use every type of energy producer that we can find from solar and wind to renewables to non-renewables and hopefully something like hydrogen will come.”

Peltz sees windmills as “a small piece of the puzzle,” with the major roles in the energy drama occupied by oil and coal.

“We’ve heard from a number of people that as far as wind farms go, if you’re going to put them up, put them up a distance from most people,” the ARC official said.

“The bigger concern seems to be the deaths in birds, and, more importantly than birds, it seems to be bats. Bats don’t reproduce as quickly as birds do.”

Within the next few months, he said, the ARC will carefully examine windmills to see if the idea is a sensible energy maker.

“We’re looking for the gaps,” he said when asked how the ARC fits into the equation.

“We’re looking for the opportunities. We’re looking to augment or complement the DOE.”

Another potential source of new jobs could be the abundance of slag piles. Pinpointing all of them is a problem.

“If we do know where they’re at, do we know what the Btu content is of that material?” he asked.

“A lot of that material is usable. Maybe it wasn’t usable years ago, but today it has a value to it. If we went out and took an inventory and made that inventory, including Btu content, available to the private sector, might there be some job-creating opportunities?”

Peltz spoke with pride about the ARC’s ability to lay 2,600 miles of asphalt in a 3,090-mile system.

“We’ve got the toughest roads left, but these roads have made a difference,” he said.

“The one from south of Beckley opened you guys up, along with the turnpike. That mobility and that access. That ability to use roads and reduce isolation.”

With 500 miles left to build, Peltz said Corridor H is considered “an important roadway piece.” All told, West Virginia figures to get between 80 and 90 miles of the remaining road construction.

Completing the journey is no easy task, considering the 500 or so miles are “the most rugged, most difficult, with a lot of streams to cross and mountainous areas to cross you have to tunnel through,” Peltz said.

Despite the steep cost of laying such roads, the dividends are obvious, he said.

“For every $1 we’ve expended, $1.35 comes back in economic benefits,” he said.

An average road costs $10 million per mile. One roadway in Pennsylvania bore a staggering $62 million per mile price tag.

The ARC is functioning probably with one-fourth of the buying power when it came on line 41 years ago, Peltz said.

But as Congress stipulated, its job was to leverage available dollars in both the public and private sector. In this regard, Peltz said, the ARC has succeeded.

“There are a lot of projects — industrial parks, multi-tenant buildings, water and sewer projects — that had it not been for that little piece of ARC funds that made the difference, wouldn’t have happened,” he said.

“There is a legislative concern as to when we should be closing our organization. When do we consider our job done? Not yet. But it’s getting there.”

— E-mail:

mannix@register-herald.com