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[Tvoivozhd <tvoivozd AT infionline.net>]

No nonsense about buying pollution credits from a clean utility plant, 
which makes it legal to flood a community or arewa with choking 
fumes---shut the S.O.B.'s down if they can't control their poisonous 
emissions.



chicagotribune.com <http://www.chicagotribune.com/>       


 Power plant's haze has neighbors fuming


   Efforts to reduce pollution from a coal-fired generating station in
   Indiana are sending acid clouds across the Wabash River to Downstate
   Mt. Carmel

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By Michael Hawthorne
Tribune staff reporter

August 29, 2004

MT. CARMEL, Ill. -- On the worst day last month, the bluish haze hit 
Bill Maples as he rounded a corner on his way to City Hall.

"All of a sudden I started to gag and it felt like my eyes were bugging 
out," said Maples, this town's economic development director. Pointing 
toward the source of the haze, a coal-fired power plant across the 
Wabash River in Indiana, he added: "You don't want to be outside when it 
comes our way."

What started as an attempt to curb one form of air pollution at the 
Gibson Generating Station ended up creating another: clouds of 
concentrated sulfuric acid that have plagued this town of 8,000 over the 
summer.

The problem first drew national attention in 2002, when an Ohio utility 
silenced complaints about caustic mist from one of its power plants by 
spending $20 million to buy out the town next door. Despite industry 
assurances that early engineering glitches had been worked out, it is 
still occurring two years later at coal-burning plants from Pennsylvania 
to Alabama.

"We've heard this too many times before," said William Auberle, acting 
dean of engineering at Northern Arizona University and a member of the 
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's advisory committee on the Clean 
Air Act. "People in these towns are tired of being treated like guinea 
pigs as the utility industry tries to solve this problem."

Faced with a May 31 deadline from federal regulators, Cinergy Corp., the 
plant's owner, spent $600 million on new equipment at Gibson to help 
make the air cleaner in faraway places like Chicago and New York by 
reducing nitrogen oxide emissions.

But some of those pollution controls created the sulfurous clouds that 
descended on neighboring Mt. Carmel in June and July, prompting 
complaints from angry residents and a lawsuit from the Illinois attorney 
general's office.

At one point, the eerie blue mist blowing into town became so intense 
that Illinois officials pressured the plant to shut down the system.

Cinergy engineers still are trying to figure out what went wrong. 
"Nobody wants this problem taken care of more than us," said Bob 
Batdorf, the Gibson plant manager. "We're part of the community. I go to 
church over there. I told my folks, `If you goof, I'm dead.'"

Their attempts are being watched closely by other utilities that are 
relying on the same technology to reduce nitrogen oxides, chemical 
byproducts of coal combustion that cook with other pollutants in the 
atmosphere to create ground-level ozone, commonly known as smog.

Sulfuric acid, an oily, corrosive liquid that can burn skin and trigger 
asthma attacks, is another ingredient in the mix of chemicals spewed by 
coal-fired power plants. Gibson releases about 1.5 million pounds of the 
acid every year, but it typically dissipates in the air and isn't 
considered a problem.

Although the new pollution controls are reducing nitrogen oxide 
emissions, Batdorf said, they apparently combined with other equipment 
to boost the amount of sulfuric acid coming out of one of Gibson's 
smokestacks.

Industry analysts and federal regulators say most coal plants appear to 
have avoided the problem. But at least five others have installed more 
equipment to control the type of mist that hit Mt Carmel, a picturesque 
county seat 290 miles south of Chicago on the Illinois-Indiana border.

Locating culprits

The blue clouds of concentrated sulfuric acid are coming mostly from 
power plants in the Ohio River Valley that burn high-sulfur coal, said 
Chad Whiteman, deputy director of the Institute of Clean Air Companies, 
a trade group of firms that install pollution controls.

One of the companies Cinergy has hired to fix Gibson has installed 
equipment to control the mist at two other coal plants in Indiana, two 
in Pennsylvania and one in Alabama. In Illinois, blue clouds have 
sputtered out of power plants near Springfield and Marion but did not 
hit the ground, according to regulators.

"These blue plumes have turned into a public relations disaster for the 
industry," said Rob Moser, a partner at Codan Development, a Santa Cruz, 
Calif.-based company that specializes in removing sulfurous mist from 
smokestacks. "They can deal with it, but these companies aren't going to 
deal with it unless somebody makes them."

Rising high above trees lining the Wabash River, Gibson is one of the 
nation's largest power plants; only two others generated more 
electricity last year.

Fed each day with 25,000 tons of high-sulfur coal dug from deep under 
Indiana and Illinois and brought to the plant by train and truck, Gibson 
also is one of the nation's top sources of pollution.

The first of Gibson's five 668-megawatt generators started providing 
electricity in 1975, five years after Congress passed the Clean Air Act. 
Like many of the other massive coal plants built during the period, 
Gibson ended up belching more pollution than the energy dinosaurs it was 
designed to replace.

It took more than two decades of court battles and congressional 
hearings for the Clean Air Act to reach Gibson and the other coal 
giants. The plant is cleaner today, but it still ranks among the top 
contributors to acid rain that kills lakes and forests, smog that makes 
breathing difficult and greenhouse gases linked to global climate change.

During the last four years, Cinergy, like many other utilities, 
installed equipment at Gibson that breaks down smog-producing nitrogen 
oxides into less-harmful nitrogen and water.

All five units at Gibson are equipped with the technology, known as 
selective catalytic reduction. Two also send the coal exhaust through 
scrubbers that strip out sulfur dioxide, another pollutant that causes 
acid rain.

In early June, soon after the controls for one of the units were turned 
on for the first time, the amount of sulfuric acid coming out of the 
smokestack became more concentrated.

Prevailing winds normally carry the plumes away from town. But during 
the next two months, the winds shifted and blew the mist toward Mt. 
Carmel. Humid weather just made the problem worse.

State EPA intervenes

The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency got involved after city 
officials and the local health department were flooded with complaints.

"I thought I had my asthma under control, but I had trouble on the days 
when those clouds hit us," said Bob Bethards, 74, a retired 
department-store manager. "I'm usually not one to complain, but if I'm 
having trouble, I'm sure others are, too."

After weeks of negotiations with city officials and state environmental 
regulators, plant officials promised to make sure the acid doesn't sock 
Mt. Carmel again.

Illinois officials helped draft the agreement, and the state filed suit 
to ensure company officials follow through with their promises, said Ann 
Alexander, environmental counsel for Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan.

Last week, a Wabash County judge issued an order requiring the company 
to comply with the agreement.

To fix the problem, Cinergy is burning low-sulfur coal and tinkering 
with various chemical injections to prevent the formation of sulfuric 
acid. Testing likely will continue past the end of the summer smog 
season, Batdorf said.

Only one of the units with both sets of pollution controls is causing 
trouble, he said. But nobody is sure why.

Gibson employees now are posted continually on the roof of the hulking 
electricity generator, their only guide a pair of makeshift sights 
aligned with two landmarks near the town, a cell-phone antenna and 
electric tower. If the smokestack plumes creep close to these imaginary 
lines, the pollution controls are to be immediately turned off. Cinergy 
also has installed a sulfuric acid monitor next to City Hall.

Norm Brunson, a city commissioner who owns a barbershop in downtown Mt. 
Carmel, said that no matter what happens, people will be talking for 
years about the blue clouds that rolled into town.

"Most of us got C's or D's in chemistry, but even I know there's a 
problem when they spend megabucks out there and we don't see any of the 
benefits," said Brunson, provoking laughter from a group of men waiting 
for a haircut recently.

"I'm sure they are trying to be a good neighbor," Brunson said. "But it 
gets to a point where you can poison people too much."

Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune <http://www.chicagotribune.com/>