By --Source, The Roanoke Times
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American Electric Power Co. spokesman Pat Hemlepp said the report is "flat -- out inaccurate." Pollution emission data collected by the Environmental Protection Agency supports both arguments.
Seven of the nine coal-fired power plants in Virginia have increased their emissions of sulfur dioxide, but the nine plants' collective sulfur dioxide emissions have fallen. Total emissions per year of nitrogen oxide have also dropped nearly 42,000 tons per year since 1995, but carbon dioxide emissions have increased by 10.6 million tons. Virginia ranked seventh in the country for net increases in carbon dioxide emissions.
Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide are major components of acid rain. cientists say carbon dioxide is a leading cause of global warming. Nitrogen oxide has been linked to asthma attacks and lung damage. The substance is also the precursor to ozone, the major component of smog. Sulfur dioxide contributes to respiratory problems and heart disease.
Using total emissions is a scare tactic, Hemlepp said. Emissions are well below the level that the Environmental Protection Agency considers safe for public health and the environment, he said.
Hemlepp said the emission rate, which is the amount of pollution created per megawatt hour of electricity generated, has been cut in half since 1990. "How does cutting emission rates in half mean it's getting worse?" Hemlepp asked. "I find that very troubling." Brian McLean, acting director of the EPA's atmospheric program, said PIRG's report tells only part of the story. The EPA required utilities to install additional emission controls on their plants in 1995. The PIRG report, released Thursday, does not show the big drop in pollution from 1994 to 1995. Nor does it show another major decrease that occurred with another wave of emissions controls in 2001. McLean said sulfur dioxide emissions fell 600,000 tons that year.
AEP's Gavin plant in Ohio, for example, reduced sulfur dioxide emissions by 325,000 tons from 1994 to 1995. PIRG's report began after that decrease, but documented a 1,217-ton increase over the following five years.
Landau, PIRG's clean air field organizer, acknowledged that emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide have decreased nationwide. But he argued that increased pollution from individual plants has a detrimental effect on public health and the environment . The federal government's cap-and-trade approach allows individual plants to increase emissions if utilities buy pollution credits from other plants that have cut their emissions more deeply than required.
"Total emissions [at Dominion] are up. We can't deny that," said Dan Genest, spokesman for Dominion Virginia Power. "The demand by Virginia citizens for electricity has gone up." But emission rates at Dominion have gone down 24 percent.
Dominion has recently installed additional emission controls at its Mount Storm plant in West Virginia. The two new scrubbers are expected to remove up to 95 percent of the sulfur dioxide coming out of the stacks, or about 100,000 tons per year. The Mount Storm plant emits 113,072 tons of sulfur dioxide a year. Dominion is also building selective catalytic reduction units at the plant. The process uses a chemical reaction to break down nitrogen oxides into nitrogen and water. The controls, expected to be completed in 2003, should remove a little more than 80 percent of nitrogen oxide emissions.
Dominion also plans to install the same equipment at its Chesterfield plant. Genest objected to the PIRG's characterization of its Clover plant as one of the nation's oldest and dirtiest power plants. The plant's two scrubbers remove between 90 percent and 94 percent of sulfur dioxide, he said.
Dominion is installing a nitrogen oxide control system that will remove about 25 percent of the pollutant.
Genest also objected to PIRG's method of calculating the increases in sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions at the Clover plant. During the first year covered in the report, only one of the plant's two generating units was operating and it was on line for only half the year. That exaggerated the increase in emissions, Genest argued. The PIRG report showed a 5.6 million ton increase in carbon dioxide and a 6,175-ton increase in nitrogen oxide emissions. Calculating from 1996, the first year both of the plant's units were operating, shows a carbon dioxide increase of nearly 2.6 million tons and a nitrogen oxide increase of 3,661 tons.
