Subject: [Homestead] Shut down, not pardon big polluters
Date: Sun, 29 Aug 2004 12:10:42 -0700
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.
Efforts to reduce pollution from a coal-fired generating station in
Indiana are sending acid clouds across the Wabash River to Downstate
Mt. Carmel
*Advertisement*
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."