Cleansing the Air at the Expense of Waterways
New York Times
13 October 2009
By Charles Duhigg
MASONTOWN, Pa. — For years, residents here complained about the yellow
smoke pouring from the tall chimneys of the nearby coal-fired power
plant, which left a film on their cars and pebbles of coal waste in
their yards. Five states — including New York and New Jersey — sued the
plant’s owner, Allegheny Energy, claiming the air pollution was causing
respiratory diseases and acid rain.
Father Rodney Torbic, the priest
at the St. George Serbian Orthodox
Church, lives across the road from Hatfield’s Ferry and sees people
suffering.- Damon Winter/The New York Times
So three years ago, when Allegheny Energy decided to install scrubbers
to clean the plant’s air emissions, environmentalists were overjoyed.
The technology would spray water and chemicals through the plant’s
chimneys, trapping more than 150,000 tons of pollutants each year
before they escaped into the sky.
But the cleaner air has come at a cost. Each day since the equipment
was switched on in June, the company has dumped tens of thousands of
gallons of wastewater containing chemicals from the scrubbing process
into the Monongahela River, which provides drinking water to 350,000
people and flows into Pittsburgh, 40 miles to the north.
“It’s like they decided to spare us having to breathe in these poisons,
but now we have to drink them instead,” said Philip Coleman, who lives
about 15 miles from the plant and has asked a state judge to toughen
the facility’s pollution regulations. “We can’t escape.”
Even as a growing number of coal-burning power plants around the nation
have moved to reduce their air emissions, many of them are creating
another problem: water pollution. Power plants are the nation’s biggest
producer of toxic waste, surpassing industries like plastic and paint
manufacturing and chemical plants, according to a New York Times
analysis of Environmental Protection Agency data.
Much power plant waste once went into the sky, but because of toughened
air pollution laws, it now often goes into lakes and rivers, or into
landfills that have leaked into nearby groundwater, say regulators and
environmentalists.
Officials at the plant here in southwest Pennsylvania — named
Hatfield’s Ferry — say it does not pose any health or environmental
risks because they have installed equipment to limit the toxins the
facility releases into the Monongahela River and elsewhere.
But as the number of scrubbers around the nation increases,
environmentalists — including those in Pennsylvania — have become
worried. The Environmental Protection Agency projects that by next
year, roughly 50 percent of coal-generated electricity in the United
States will come from plants that use scrubbers or similar
technologies, creating vast new sources of wastewater.
Yet no federal regulations specifically govern the disposal of power
plant discharges into waterways or landfills. Some regulators have used
laws like the Clean Water Act to combat such pollution. But those laws
can prove inadequate, say regulators, because they do not mandate
limits on the most dangerous chemicals in power plant waste, like
arsenic and lead.
For instance, only one in 43 power plants and other electric utilities
across the nation must limit how much barium they dump into nearby
waterways, according to a Times analysis of E.P.A. records. Barium,
which is commonly found in power plant waste and scrubber wastewater,
has been linked to heart problems and diseases in other organs.
Even when power plant emissions are regulated by the Clean Water Act,
plants have often violated that law without paying fines or facing
other penalties. Ninety percent of 313 coal-fired power plants that
have violated the Clean Water Act since 2004 were not fined or
otherwise sanctioned by federal or state regulators, according to a
Times analysis of Environmental Protection Agency records. (An
interactive database of power plant violations around the nation is
available at www.nytimes.com/coalplants.)
Fines for Plants Modest
Other plants have paid only modest fines. For instance, Hatfield’s
Ferry has violated the Clean Water Act 33 times since 2006. For those
violations, the company paid less than $26,000. During that same
period, the plant’s parent company earned $1.1 billion.
“We know that coal waste is so dangerous that we don’t want it in the
air, and that’s why we’ve told power plants they have to install
scrubbers,” said Senator Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat who is
chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. “So
why are they dumping the same waste into people’s water?”
Though the Environmental Protection Agency promised earlier this decade
to consider new regulations on power plant waste — and reiterated that
pledge after a Tennessee dam break sent 1.1 billion gallons of coal
waste into farms and homes last year — federal regulators have yet to
issue any major new rules.
One reason is that some state governments have long fought new federal
regulations, often at the behest of energy executives, say
environmentalists and regulators.
The counties surrounding Hatfield’s Ferry, which are home to multiple
universities, are an example of what hangs in the balance as this
debate plays out.
Last year, when Hatfield’s Ferry asked the state for permission to dump
scrubber wastewater into the Monongahela River, the Pennsylvania
Department of Environmental Protection approved the request with
proposed limits on some chemicals.
But state officials placed no limits on water discharges of arsenic,
aluminum, boron, chromium, manganese, nickel or other chemicals that
have been linked to health risks, all of which have been detected in
the plant’s wastewater samples, according to state documents.
Records show, and company officials concede, that Hatfield’s Ferry is
already dumping scrubber wastewater into the Monongahela that violates
the state’s few proposed pollution rules. Moreover, those rules have
been suspended until a judge decides on the plant’s appeal of the
proposed limits.
“You can get used to the plant, and the noise and soot on your cars,”
said Father Rodney Torbic, the priest at the St. George Serbian
Orthodox Church, across the road from Hatfield’s Ferry. “But I see
people suffering every day because of this pollution.”
Officials at Hatfield’s Ferry say there is no reason for residents to
be concerned. They say that lawsuits against the plant are without
merit, and that they have installed a $25 million water treatment plant
that removes many of the toxic particles and solids from scrubber
wastewater. The solids are put into a 106-acre landfill that contains a
synthetic liner to prevent leaks.
Hatfield’s Ferry, a coal-fired
plant, pulls
pollutants from its flues, but some of the emissions end up in the
Monongahela. - Damon Winter/The New York Times
Officials say that the plant’s pollution does not pose any risk. Limits
on arsenic, aluminum, barium, boron, cadmium, chromium, manganese and
nickel are not appropriate, the company wrote in a statement, because
the plant’s wastewater is not likely to cause the Monongahela River to
exceed safety levels for those contaminants.
“Allegheny has installed state-of-the-art scrubbers, state-of-the-art
wastewater treatment, and state-of-the-art synthetic liners,” the
company wrote in a statement. “We operate to be in compliance with all
environmental laws and will continue to do so.”
The plant’s water treatment facility, however, does not remove all
dissolved metals and chemicals, many of which go into the river,
executives concede. An analysis of records from other plants with
scrubbers indicates that such wastewater often contains high
concentrations of dissolved arsenic, barium, boron, iron, manganese,
cadmium, magnesium and other heavy metals that have been shown to
contribute to cancer, organ failures and other diseases. Company
officials say the emissions by the plant will not pose health risks,
because they will be diluted in the river.
Though synthetic liners are generally considered effective at
preventing leaks, environmentalists note that the Hatfield’s Ferry
landfill is less than a mile uphill from the river, and that over time,
other types of liners have proven less reliable than initially hoped.
The Environmental Protection Agency, in a statement last month, said it
planned to revise standards for water discharges from coal-fired power
plants like Hatfield’s Ferry. Agency studies have concluded that
“current regulations, which were issued in 1982, have not kept pace
with changes that have occurred in the electric power industry,”
officials wrote.
But some environmentalists and lawmakers say that such rules will not
be enough, and that new laws are needed that force plants to use more
expensive technologies that essentially eliminate toxic discharges.
Cleaning Up Pollution
“It’s really important to set a precedent that tells power plants that
they need to genuinely clean up pollution, rather than just shift it
from the air to the water,” said Abigail Dillen, a lawyer with the law
firm Earthjustice, which represents two advocacy organizations, the
Environmental Integrity Project and the Citizens Coal Council, in
asking a Pennsylvania court to toughen regulations on Hatfield’s Ferry.
Ms. Dillen, like other environmentalists, has urged courts and
lawmakers to force plants to adopt “zero discharge” treatment
facilities, which are more expensive but can eliminate most pollution.
State officials say they have established appropriate water pollution
limits for Hatfield’s Ferry, and have strict standards for landfill
disposal.
“We asked the plant for estimates on how much of various pollutants
they are likely to emit, and based on those estimates, we set limits
that are protective of the Monongahela,” said Ron Schwartz, a state
environmental official. “We have asked them to monitor some chemicals,
including arsenic, and if levels grow too high, we may intervene.”
However, environmental groups have argued in court documents and
interviews that Hatfield’s Ferry probably will emit dangerous
chemicals, and that they fear the state is unlikely to intervene.
Similar problems have emerged elsewhere. Twenty-one power plants in 10
states, including Alabama, Kentucky, North Carolina and Ohio, have
dumped arsenic into rivers or other waters at concentrations as much as
18 times the federal drinking water standard, according to a Times
analysis of E.P.A. data.
In Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, North Carolina, Ohio,
Wisconsin and elsewhere, power plants have dumped other chemicals at
dangerous concentrations. Few of those plants have ever been sanctioned
for those emissions, nor were their discharge permits altered to
prevent future pollution.
Records indicate that power plant landfills and other disposal
practices have polluted groundwater in more than a dozen states,
contaminating the water in some towns with toxic chemicals. A 2007
report published by the E.P.A. suggested that people living near some
power plant landfills faced a cancer risk 2,000 times higher than
federal health standards.
Lobbyists Block Controls
In 2000, Environmental Protection Agency officials tried to issue
stricter controls on power plant waste. But a lobbying campaign by the
coal and power industries, as well as public officials in 13 states,
blocked the effort. In 2008 alone, according to campaign finance
reports, power companies donated $20 million to the political campaigns
of federal lawmakers, almost evenly divided between Democrats and
Republicans.
In interviews, E.P.A. officials said that toughening pollution rules
for power plants was among their top priorities. Last month, the agency
announced it was moving forward on new rules regulating greenhouse gas
emissions from hundreds of power plants and other large industrial
facilities. Lisa P. Jackson, who was confirmed to head the agency in
January, has said she would determine by the end of the year whether
certain power plant byproducts should be treated as hazardous waste,
which would subject them to tougher regulations.
But for now, there are no new rules on power plant waste. And many
states are trying to dissuade Ms. Jackson from creating new
regulations, according to state and federal regulators, because they
worry that new rules will burden overworked regulators, and because
power plants have pressured local politicians to fight greater
regulation.
For instance, Pennsylvania has opposed designating the waste from
Hatfield’s Ferry and other power plants as hazardous. In a statement,
the Department of Environmental Protection said the state had
“sufficient state and federal laws and regulations at our disposal to
control wastewater discharges at levels protective of the environment
and public health.”
But residents living near power plants disagree.
“Americans want cheap electricity, but those of us who live around
power plants are the ones who have to pay for it,” Mr. Coleman said.
“It’s like being in the third world.”
Karl Russell contributed reporting.