Hazy Outlook
by Zeb Wainright
The road to the Centralia coal-power plant winds away from town and into the rural countryside. At first, only an infrequent mix of farms, houses and trees line the road. After a few miles, however, billowing clouds of steam appear, seemingly rising from the hills. Farther down the road, the enormous plant comes into view; first the towers and then the rest of the large, gray building. Huge coal trucks, with tires bigger than most cars, look miniature next to the structure. Behind the plant is a backdrop of stripped earth, black piles of coal and many rectangular man-made ponds where water used in the plant is cooled.
In 1999, the Centralia plant released 21,828 tons of nitrogen oxide and 87,756 tons of sulfur dioxide into the air — more than any other industrial source in Washington state that year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
When Canadian energy company TransAlta bought the Centralia plant in 2000, the company spent $200 million to install pollution "scrubbers" to reduce the sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions. The company’s goal was an 85 percent reduction of pollutants.
On Dec. 31, 2002, the George W. Bush administration announced major revisions to the Clean Air Act. Environmentalists criticized the changes, saying the new regulations are too lenient towards industry. In the future, upgrades like those made to reduce pollution from the Centralia plant would be required less frequently under the CAA.
The scrubbers TransAlta installed at the Centralia plant are an example of Best Available Control Technology. The plant’s scrubbers combine sulfur dioxide with liquid limestone to form synthetic gypsum used in wallboard. At the same time, the plant also cut nitrogen oxide emissions by about a third by installing higher efficiency burners.
Southwest Clean Air Agency chief engineer Paul Mairose said 2003 will be the first full year the plant will run with both scrubbers installed, but he expects the reductions to be near the 85 percent that TransAlta predicted. The agency enforces federal, state and local outdoor air quality standards and regulations in Clark, Cowlitz, Lewis, Skamania and Wahkiakum counties in Washington state.
Bush’s proposed revisions could change when plants are required to upgrade to new technology, like the scrubbers at the Centralia plant. The revisions came after Bush’s National Energy Policy Development Group asked the EPA in 2001 to determine if the New Source Review section of the CAA was too restrictive to industry.
Created in 1977, the NSR is a part of the CAA that requires any new power plant built to meet current pollution standards. According to the EPA Web site, the review process was designed to protect areas with good air quality and help clean up areas with poor air quality. The process was supposed to reduce pollutants such as sulfur dioxide.
Northwest Environmental Advocates Executive Director Nina Bell said sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide are two common pollutants produced during the burning of coal. She said sulfur dioxide can produce the hazy brown cloud that often hangs over the Interstate 5 corridor.
The NSR section also requires existing facilities to apply for a NSR permit when they perform a major upgrade that provides a significant increase in production capacity and pollution. The EPA’s study found that the NSR prevented facilities from investing in ways to improve energy efficiency. According to the study, the process took too long and the required technology was cost-prohibitive. The upgrades at the Centralia plant, for example, cost $200 million. It also took the plant 18 months to go through the permitting process to build a backup natural gas plant.
"The NSR permit process can add a year or more to the time needed to review proposed plant modifications and cost over $1 million," according to the EPA Web site. "As a result, many companies delay or abandon plans to modernize their facilities in ways that would benefit the environment."
The four main changes made to NSR policies in 2002, because of the EPA’s study, were the addition of plant-wide applicability limits, clean unit exemptions, changes in emissions calculations and a simplified pollution control and prevention projects program.
Plant-wide applicability limits place a single emissions cap on an entire facility. A company can escape NSR approval if their overall emissions don’t exceed this cap.
A pollution control exemption applies to a specific unit of the facility and would exempt pollution control projects from NSR approval as long as they produced an overall reduction in pollution. The exemption would prevent singling out specific pollutants for control. In the future, this exemption would allow the Centralia plant to decrease one type of pollution but increase another, as long as the project resulted in overall emissions decreases.
Under the clean unit exemption, when a company upgrades a unit in their facility to meet current air quality standards, they receive a permit that allows them not to conduct an upgrade for 10 years after they install BACT. A unit is a component of the facility, such as a generator. The Centralia plant could ask for a clean unit exemption for sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide. If they could demonstrate the scrubbers are BACT then they could have clean unit status for 10 years.
The NSR revisions also change how a company measures pollution increases. Companies will look at a projection of their actual emissions instead of their potential emissions. Projected actual emissions are less likely to require a NSR because they are usually lower.
"We were aiming to provide greater regulatory certainty and flexibility for industry to make voluntary emissions reductions while preserving the same amount of protection provided by the current program," EPA environmental engineer Lynn Hutchinson said.
Environmentalists have criticized the EPA for its decision to change the NSR because they say the changes will make it easier for companies to avoid installing BACT, meaning the new regulations will be too lenient towards industry.
These changes are a solution the EPA says is necessary to help streamline the NSR, but environmental groups are fighting the changes. They say they are too complicated and provide too many loopholes for industry to avoid regulations.
"The people on the other side are saying this will make it easier to clean up but it’s just another giveaway to industry and especially the fossil fuel industry, and the Bush administration is a fossil fuel administration," said Patrick Mazza, research director at Climate Solutions, a nonprofit group that focuses on global warming. "You can see that in a number of ways from its industry policy to its climate policy to its war plans in the Middle East."
Bill Becker is the executive director of the State and Territorial Air Pollution Program Administrators and the Association of Local Air Pollution Control Officials. Both are national associations representing air pollution control agencies in 49 states and more than 165 major cities throughout the United States. The associations act as a national coalition that lobbies Congress and the EPA on legislations and regulations, Becker said.
"(The revisions) allow facilities that would have been subject to New Source Review requirements, including the installation of modern pollution controls, to avoid requirements in the future," Becker said. "Many more industries will escape controls, and that’s a step backwards."
Hutchinson said the problem with the old NSR was that when a facility wanted to upgrade they had to install BACT. Upgrading usually means spending a lot of money so many companies would avoid any upgrades he said.
"They would do nothing, so you have dirty, old equipment continuing to run, as opposed to cleaner more efficient plants," she said. "In the end we feel we get better reductions with the voluntary reductions."
Washington had a deadline to make the NSR changes by March 3, 2002. But, because the requirements are so complicated, they won’t be completed until the middle of 2004.
Despite criticism from environmental groups like Climate Solutions, Bush and the EPA believe changes to the NSR are necessary. Major polluting sources can clean up, like the Centralia plant, but opponents wonder if the president is doing enough to force them to, Mazza said.
"The President’s plan actually rolls back existing air pollution laws, allowing any power plant in any community to increase emissions without safeguards to protect the public," said David G. Hawkins, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council Climate Center.
The reductions in sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide at the Centralia plant show what installing BACT can do for emissions reductions. But, critics fear the new NSR policy changes will make air quality improvements like these less likely at other facilities across the country.
"It doesn’t mean (the Centralia plant is) clean, but they are heck of a lot cleaner," Bell said. "It’s not perfect, but it’s a huge improvement."
