Lawsuit targets Homer City power plant

Homer City Clean Air Act Lawsuit alleges unlawful emissions and failure to install pollution controls, citing sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, particulate matter, smog, soot, and health harms impacting New York and Pennsylvania.

Calling the Homer City power plant one of the largest out-of-state contributors to New York's sulfur dioxide pollution, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced he intends to file a lawsuit against the plant for “multiple violations” of the Federal Clean Air Act.

Law requires that notice be given at least 60 days before the power plant lawsuit is filed in court.

“The owners of Homer City Station have ignored their legal obligations while their power plant pollutes our skies and our lungs with over 100,000 tons of emissions each year,” Cuomo said in a press release. “We will hold the owners of the Homer City power plant accountable for breaking clean air laws and for endangering the health and environment of New Yorkers.”

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection is joining the utility lawsuit as announced, the attorney general's office said.

According to the press release, the Homer City plant violated the Clean Air Act when it failed to install state-of-the-art pollution controls after several modifications between 1982 and 1996 increased pollution emissions. Cuomo alleges the plant emits more than 100,000 tons of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter into the air each year, which is blown into New York, contributing to smog and soot pollution that prompted New York coal plants to cut emissions in recent years.

The pollutants, he charges, are directly linked to increased asthma attacks, lung diseases and other health problems associated with America's dirtiest power plants nationwide, as well as the acid rain that damages lakes, forests and wildlife in the Adirondack and Catskill regions of New York.

The intent to sue names a consortium of eight limited liability companies who own the plant, its operator, EME Homer City Generation LP, and former owners including Chestnut Ridge Energy Co., Mission Energy Westside Inc., Pennsylvania Electric Co., and New York State Electric and Gas Corp. It seeks to require the companies to fully comply with the Clean Air Act by installing the pollution controls, as in the Illinois Power settlement announced by the U.S.

No one from the state DEP or the Homer City plant could be reached for comment this morning.

This is not the first time the power plant has faced legal action based on environmental concerns. In July 2007, it agreed to pay a $200,000 fine and modify a wastewater treatment system after the DEP claimed the plant violated the state's Clean Streams Law by discharging more selenium into Blacklick Creek than the wastewater discharge permit allowed.

Selenium is a trace element in Pennsylvania coal and is an essential nutrient, but overexposure causes health problems. The plant's flue gas desulphurization equipment cleans pollutants out of the smoke in the stacks, including sulfur dioxide and selenium, but removing selenium from the wastewater generated in the process is more difficult and often follows a coal plant cleanup timetable set by regulators.

The plant spent more than $1.6 million between June 2004 and March 2007 trying to get selenium out of the wastewater.

Last October, the DEP approved the plant's harms/benefit analysis concerning a plan to expand a residual waste landfill by 76 acres.

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