Love
it or hate it, this region has its share of hazy, if not lazy days. Credit the
“lake effect” in part. But there’s also an atmospheric effect that
could be termed “coal comfort.” The Great Lakes region has long been
dependent on large coal-fired electric-generating plants. And despite the
availability of cleaner technologies, some more-or-less local power plants
still belch out soot in impressive quantities.
Rochester has its own piece of the
action on the Lake Ontario shore in Greece: “Rochester 7,” aka
Rochester Gas and Electric’s Russell Station. Known casually as a good fishing
spot because of its warm-water effluent, the plant may be shut down in a few
years. In any case, it recently earned a dishonorable mention in an
environmental report. The report is Lethal
Legacy: A Comprehensive Look at America’s Dirtiest Power Plants, prepared
by the US Public Interest Research Group (USPIRG) and released here October 28
by the group’s state affiliate, NYPIRG.
Lethal
Legacy calls the Russell Station “the 12th least efficient plant
nationwide in terms of SO2 [sulfur dioxide] rate.” The report determines
efficiency by comparing a plant’s emissions of pollutants to its heat input,
the latter measured in BTUs. Using federal Environmental Protection Agency
data, the report says that in 2002 Russell Station emitted 26,395 tons of this
key pollutant. The plant also released 1.7 million tons of carbon dioxide.
(RG&E spokesperson Dick Marion did not return a call for comment.)
There’s more to Lethal Legacy, though, than mere presentation of data and general
concern for the environment. For example, simply by tabulating carbon dioxide
emissions, the report touches on key questions before Congress and the courts.
For example: Is CO2 actually a pollutant, or is it just a natural component of
the atmosphere? Or are rising levels of atmospheric CO2 the principal cause for
worry about the environmental future — and a compelling reason to shut the
coal plants down?
But most immediately important, the
report tracks where the Bush administration and the president’s ever-changing
EPA are leading the nation and the world.
NYPIRG’s
Western New York coordinator, Michael Davoli, is clearly worried about the
road ahead — and the present.
At a recent Rochester news
conference, he spoke about the coal-fired power plants that most affect this
part of North America. And though he mentioned the Russell Station, he didn’t
dwell on it.
That’s because there are bigger
regional fish to fry. Take the Huntley plant in Tonawanda, just north of
Buffalo on the Niagara River.
Huntley is “the 49th most
inefficient power plant in the country,” says Davoli. Owned by the
Minneapolis-based transnational NRG Energy Inc., the plant is a big polluter by
any standard. According to EPA data given in Lethal Legacy, Huntley emitted 38,998 tons of sulfur dioxide in
2002 — almost 50 percent more than the Russell plant — along with 3.5
million tons of carbon dioxide and 7,158 tons of nitrogen oxides.
Then there’s another NRG property,
the Dunkirk Steam Station, on the Lake Erie shoreline southwest of Buffalo. An
even bigger emitter than Huntley, Dunkirk pumped out 51,907 tons of SO2 last
year, plus 3.6 million tons of CO2. (A Minneapolis-based NRG spokesperson said
she’d comment after reviewing the USPIRG and NYPIRG materials; she did not
follow up as promised, however.)
The Dunkirk and Huntley plants are
not the only New York plants to be concerned about. NYPIRG says there are 19
especially “dirty” plants statewide. At least one of them makes even
Dunkirk look small — Long Island’s Northport plant, which emitted 5.7 million
tons of CO2 last year.
Beyond the numbers, though, what
effect do emissions on this scale have?
Briefly, they pump out substances
that harm human health. Especially troubling are smog-forming, soot-forming
pollutants like sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. Often euphemized in the
technical literature as “particulates,” soot does much worse than
turn things drab and dirty. “Community heath
studies,” says an American Lung Association backgrounder, have
“demonstrated that fine particle air pollution [is] associated with
increased use of asthma medication in children, decline in respiratory
function, increased emergency room visits and hospitalization for respiratory
and cardiac problems, and premature death.”
Coal plants emit
other heavy-duty poisons, too. For example, says Michael Davoli, these plants
are “the largest source of toxic mercury [pollution].”
A 1997 EPA report
to Congress backs this up. Of the 158 tons of mercury emitted by
“anthropogenic” sources in the US annually, says the report, fully 33
percent comes from coal-fired utility plants.
For
decades, Americans have expected to see — and smell — steady
improvements in air quality.
But USPIRG,
NYPIRG, and other groups warn of backsliding.
In particular,
they’re sounding alarms about White House moves to fillet the Clean Air Act via
a legislative package called “Clear Skies.” One piece of this package
could keep the nation’s coal plants polluting at higher levels than necessary. And
after some delay, the Bush administration has begun a new campaign to ram the
legislation through.
According to an
EPA summary, over the next 15 years Clear Skies would cut sulfur dioxide
emissions by 73 percent, nitrogen oxides emissions by 67 percent, and mercury
emissions by 69 percent. But most environmental groups are not impressed. The
Natural Resources Defense Council, for example, says the targets in Clear Skies
“are weaker than those that would be put in place if the Bush
administration simply implemented and enforced the existing law.” (In this
connection, note the EPA’s sleight-of-hand: NRDC’s language emphasizes progress
through a phase-in of strengthened rules. But the EPA says Clear Skies would “achieve substantially greater
reductions in pollution… than are attainable
under current law.” Emphasis added.)
The amounts at
issue aren’t trivial, either. Clear Skies would allow “three times more
toxic mercury emissions, 50 percent more sulfur emissions, and hundreds of
thousands more tons of smog-forming nitrogen oxides,” says the NRDC.
How would this
happen?
One mechanism the
Bush plan favors is a rollback of New Source Review (NSR), which basically requires
technological upgrades when old plants like Russell or Huntley are subjected to
anything beyond routine maintenance. This mechanism has been part of the Clean
Air Act since 1977. The NRDC and other groups charge that Bush’s friends in the
energy industry have worked to weaken NSR, and that the Clear Skies legislation
would make the industry’s wish-list the law of the land.
For their part,
the utilities don’t seem eager to tell whether they’d use Clear Skies to keep
their old plants on-line longer — without having to add anti-pollution
equipment.
These
considerations could have direct effects on Western New York
and the Genesee Region, and far beyond. But relevant things are brewing across
the border, too.
Ontario Power
Generation’s Nanticoke Thermal Power Station on the north shore of Lake Erie
sends large amounts of pollution over a wide swath, with Rochester almost at
the center.
According to Ontario Power literature, Nanticoke, which actually has eight
turbines cranking out 4,000 megawatts, is one of the world’s largest coal-fired
plants. The pollution output is world-class, too: “The emissions form
Nanticoke are equivalent to 3.5 million cars,” a Niagara Region (Ontario)
health administrator told the CBC News earlier this year.
This past May,
New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer filed a complaint under NAFTA
rules about pollution from Nanticoke and two other Ontario coal plants. One of
the others is the Lakeview plant in Mississauga, just west of Toronto.
Some Ontarians
are going after their problem plants, of course. The Toronto-based Ontario
Clean Air Alliance has put special emphasis on cleaning the plants up. The
Alliance’s chair, Jack Gibbons, says the group has been working with US
officials and environmental organizations toward that common goal. Spitzer,
says Gibbons, “has been a real champion.”
Gibbons sounds
hopeful about an imminent change at home. He notes the Liberal Party under
Dalton McGuinty just won “a tremendous victory” last month in
provincial elections. The Liberals, Gibbons says, campaigned on a promise to
phase out all the province’s coal-fired plants by 2007. (The now-defeated
Tories under incumbent Premier Ernie Eves had promised only to “work
toward” a phase-out by 2015.)
The Liberals
further promised to boost renewable energy sources: hydropower, wind, and so
forth. This is comparable to George Pataki’s pledge last January: The governor
said New York’s proportion of electricity generated by renewables would rise to
25 percent in 10 years.
Of course, it
remains to be seen if either pledge will be implemented on schedule.
Meanwhile, Eliot
Spitzer’s name appeared prominently on a multi-state lawsuit filed against the
federal EPA at the end of October. The central issue is the rule-change on New
Source Review.
“The new
regulation,” said the attorney general’s office, “states that any
modification costing up to 20 percent of the replacement cost of the unit will
be considered routine maintenance, and therefore exempt from pollution
controls, even if [this] results in much higher levels of air pollution.”
There you have
it: If Washington trumps Albany and Toronto, Rochesterians won’t be breathing
easier.
This article appears in Nov 5-11, 2003.
