VCU to Conduct Health Impact Assessment to Inform Residents and Policy Makers on Proposed Alternative Energy Power Plant in Western Virginia

By Sathya Achia Abraham

Virginia Commonwealth University researchers will assess how the health of residents in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and surrounding regions may be impacted by a proposal to build an alternative energy plant in the area.

The findings will be used to inform the zoning and permitting decisions that are necessary to move the construction of a proposed poultry litter-fired power plant forward.

The 13-month project, which brings together researchers from VCU’s Center on Human Needs and Center for Environmental Studies, is made possible through a recent grant from the Health Impact Project. The Health Impact Project is a collaboration of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and The Pew Charitable Trusts. VCU was one of 15 institutions to receive an award out of an applicant pool of nearly 250. Read the announcement here -- http://www.healthimpactproject.org/news/project/grants-awarded-to-help-build-health-into-decisions-on-energy-housing-agriculture-and-other-areas. 

The team, which includes Benjamin Evans, MHSA, policy research manager in the VCU Center on Human Needs; Greg Garman, Ph.D., director of VCU’s Center for Environmental Studies; and Steven Woolf, M.D., M.P.H., professor in the Department of Family Medicine and director of the VCU Center on Human Needs, plans to learn how health is impacted by the way poultry litter is managed.

According to Evans, poultry farms in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia produce hundreds of thousands of tons of poultry litter annually. While poultry litter is a valuable fertilizer, the industry produces more of it than is needed for local crop production. This excess litter can contribute to water quality problems, which can impact health in a variety of ways, such as contaminating drinking water supplies. In addition, the loss of employment from industries such as fishing and tourism – which rely on good water quality - also negatively impacts health.

As part of Virginia’s federally mandated plan to reduce water pollution in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, a technology company has proposed building a regional power plant that converts poultry litter to electricity. Citizens are concerned that emissions from the power plant could negatively impact public health, said Evans. Furthermore, because of atmospheric conditions, the population potentially affected by these emissions is not necessarily limited to those in the Shenandoah Valley, but could include other surrounding regions. Evans, Garman, Woolf and colleagues will study the health impacts of these different management options.

“Policy decisions outside of the health care sector are often made without attention towards the impact it will have on health,” said Evans.

“Because the factors that determine health are so broad and interconnected, policy decisions in education, land use, agriculture, transportation or other areas can impact health just as much or even more than decisions on health care,” he said.