[BCNnet] Planned Illinois coal plant could cast haze over refuge - Chicago Tribune article

[birdchris at aol.com]

Many groups, including Sierra Club, are doing as much as possible to stop this plant proposal through various legal and lobbying means. If only the Governor had come through with the cleaner power plant standards he promised before the election... sounds familiar, huh? Promises, promises, promises.
 
If you want to get more information about coal-fired power plants and air quality across the Midwest - check the web site - sierraclub.org and click on Illinois Chapter.
 
Christine Williamson
Chicago/Cook
birdchris at aol.com
 
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Randi Doeker - Chicago <rbdoeker at yahoo.com>
To: BCNnet at ece.iit.edu
Sent: Mon, 21 Mar 2005 08:34:37 -0600
Subject: [BCNnet] Planned Illinois coal plant could cast haze over refuge - Chicago Tribune article


Forwarded with little comment because there is nothing polite I can say about our Governor.
Randi Doeker
Chicago
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Planned Illinois coal plant could cast haze over refuge 
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By Michael Hawthorne
Chicago Tribune staff reporter
March 21, 2005
PUXICO, Mo. -- From a bluff above the remnants of a vast hardwood swamp, the view often is clouded by haze that makes this soggy thicket of cypress and tupelo one of the dirtiest wilderness areas in the nation.
Scientists at the federal agency that oversees the Mingo National Wildlife Refuge say a new coal-fired power plant approved by the administration of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich only will make the problem worse--adding more pollution to the chemical stew lingering over the herons, turtles and otters that live here.
After Illinois regulators refused to require the Peabody Energy plant to wash its coal and install additional pollution controls, two commonly used methods to curb haze-forming chemicals, the scientists urged their bosses at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to file an appeal.
They were overruled by political appointees in Washington, who won't join opponents fighting the project even though the agency still says the power plant to be built near Marissa, Ill., about 40 miles southeast of St. Louis-- would fall short of Clean Air Act rules intended to protect national parks and wilderness areas.
The decision raises questions about whether the Bush administration is interpreting the law to benefit Peabody, the world's largest coal company and by far the industry's leading campaign contributor. It also highlights the conflict between an aggressive push for more coal plants and the federal government's obligations to keep air clean at Mingo and in other treasured areas.
"This is great for Peabody's shareholders and for people who don't breathe the air," said John Thompson, advocacy coordinator for the Clean Air Task Force, one of several environmental groups challenging the power plant's state permit.
State officials are promoting the proposed Prairie State Generating Station as the first of up to 12 new coal plants in Illinois--more than in any other state. Among other things, they contend the plants are needed if more restrictive federal pollution laws force older coal plants to shut down.
"We believe the plant is using clean-coal technology and we are comfortable with our decision" to approve it, said Laurel Kroack, chief of the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency's air bureau.
Nobody disagrees that the Peabody plant would be cleaner than any existing coal plant in Illinois.
The question is whether the plant, which would be built 85 miles northeast of the Mingo refuge, would be clean enough to meet federal laws that require the best available technology to limit threats to public health and give special protection to wilderness areas.
Environmental groups also say the Prairie State plant should be compared to other projects that plan to use even cleaner methods to burn coal, not the energy dinosaurs that were built more than 40 years ago.
Another plant planned for Illinois would burn the same type of coal as Peabody's plant, but its rate of sulfur dioxide pollution would be about a fifth of Peabody's, according to state records.
Thompson said the state's decision to give Peabody a permit sets a bad precedent.
"Why build a cleaner plant if your competitor can use inferior technology, release vastly more pollution and have an adverse impact on a national wildlife refuge?" he said.
Federal scientists say they likely wouldn't have a problem with the Peabody plant if it was built with the cleaner technology. But they stopped short of urging its use, opting instead to suggest that the coal company could take less dramatic steps to limit haze-forming pollution.
According to a study by the Fish and Wildlife Service's air quality office, the difference would be felt at the Mingo refuge, the last large patch of hardwood swamp left from what once spread over 2.5 million acres in southeastern Missouri.
Designated as a national wildlife refuge in the mid-1940s, Mingo reflects the mix of biology and geology where the Ozark Plateau meets Southern bottomlands and Northern hardwood forests. The Mississippi River meandered through the area until an earthquake along the New Madrid Fault 18,000 years ago shifted the muddy channel about 60 miles east.
More than 130,000 people flock to the refuge each year, but dirty air often hangs over the swamp, as it does in better-known wilderness areas like Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon that are supposed to share the same protection from air pollution.
Of the 156 wilderness areas that Congress voted to protect under the Clean Air Act in the late 1970s, Mingo is one of the haziest, according to federal records. The pollution comes from power-plant smokestacks and vehicle exhaust blown toward the refuge from miles away.
"If people are coming here to look and they can't see anything, that's a problem," said Kathleen Burchett, refuge manager at Mingo.
"I live here and raise my kids here," she said. "If it's bad for the environment, it's bad for us too."
The Illinois EPA awarded Peabody a permit to build the Prairie State plant after reviewing an air-pollution analysis by the company's contractors. That analysis was based on a computer model that federal land mangers have used for years to predict how new sources of pollution would affect wilderness areas.
But the contractors made some changes that altered the results, leading Peabody to conclude that the plant would not contribute to haze at the wildlife refuge. State officials accepted the results over the objections of federal land managers.
"The methodology [Peabody] used was `one-sided,'" the Fish and Wildlife Service concluded in a summary of its discussions with state regulators. "That is, it only applied these adjustments to the instances where high impacts were predicted."
Sandra Silva, chief of the air quality branch at the Fish and Wildlife Service, said the decision was "one of only three times in the past 20 years that a state has awarded a permit despite our concerns. We're extremely surprised and disappointed with the way this has turned out."
Peabody, which contributed more than $600,000 to federal candidates and national political parties during the 2004 election cycle, most of it to Republicans, urged the wildlife agency to drop its objections. The agency still thinks the plant would have an "adverse impact" on the Mingo refuge but opted not to appeal the company's permit.
"It's a policy call," said Paul Hoffman, deputy assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of the Interior, which oversees the Fish and Wildlife Service. He declined to elaborate.
Legal challenges have stalled construction of the Peabody plant . If built, it would provide more electricity than any of the state's older coal plants, but it would be equipped with scrubbers and other equipment that substantially reduce the amount of air pollution coming out of the smokestack.
For instance, the rate of sulfur dioxide emissions from the plant would be about a fifth of the national average for existing coal plants, according to Peabody.
"We see this plant as a terrific model and an environmental solution," said Vic Svec, a Peabody spokesman.
Although more than three-quarters of the coal mined in the eastern United States is washed to remove sulfur and other impurities, Peabody chose instead to rely on equipment that removes sulfuric gases after the coal is burned. The company also said installing additional pollution filters requested by federal land managers wouldn't work because the gases would be too corrosive.
Blagojevich backs the Peabody project because the company plans to burn coal mined next to the plant, providing a boost to a beleaguered industry that once provided the economic backbone of southern Illinois.
To meet national limits on sulfur dioxide pollution, most of the state's utilities switched to low-sulfur coal from Western states during the last decade rather than installing pollution controls in order to keep burning high-sulfur Illinois coal.
Along with a greater reliance on machines to mine coal, the fuel switching has devastated many southern Illinois communities. The number of coal miners working in the state has dropped to about 4,000 in 2005 from 18,000 in 1990, according to the Illinois Coal Association.
Coal companies and their political allies say the only way the industry will rebound is if new plants are built. The Peabody plant is expected to create 2,500 construction jobs and 450 permanent jobs.
"In the old days, you couldn't mine Illinois coal and protect the quality of our air," Blagojevich said last month in his State of the State Message. "Now you can."


Copyright (c) 2005, Chicago Tribune
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