Southside Virginia’s air, ranked as pretty dirty, is getting cleaner.
Just over the state line, Progress Energy is beefing up pollution controls at its two coal-fired power plants in Person County — improving air quality and, temporarily at least, providing a major job boost for the region.
Work began in late summer to install scrubbers at the 741-megawatt Mayo plant in sight of the North Carolina border on U.S. 501. According to Progress Energy, 200 construction workers — laborers, electricians, millwrights, welders, crane operators and others — are currently onsite, with the number expected to grow to 300 at the height of construction. The target date for completion is spring 2009.
Just to the west in Semora, N.C., Progress Energy is several years into a sister project to install scrubbers on all four units at its huge 2,425-megawatt plant. The first of the scrubber units went on-line in spring 2007. The remaining work at the Semora facility should be complete by fall 2008.
With the upgrades, Progress Energy estimates it will spend $804 million to convert two of the dirtiest power plants on the East Coast into models for the entire industry, the company says.
“Once we get the scrubber units completed, these will be some of the cleanest operating coal-fired plants in the United States,” said Pam Oakley-Lisk, a Progress Energy spokesperson.
The N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources takes a similar view. Tom Mather, an agency spokesperson, said this week that the Person County projects will have “a huge impact” on air quality both across the wide region and in communities located nearest to the two projects, including Halifax County.
“These controls should have a very beneficial effect on the emissions coming from these plants,” said Mather.
Critics of coal burning plants would argue that the improvements are long overdue. John Suttles, senior attorney with the Southern Environment Law Center office in Chapel Hill, N.C., says coal plants such as the two Person County projects create acute, localized pollution problems which can be very toxic. Suttles applauds the Progress Energy upgrades on three major counts — reducing sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particle emissions — but said the utility should be compelled to do more to control compounds such as mercury, a major contributor to heart and lung diseases, among other illnesses.
“Unfortunately, having [reduced some emissions], when it came time to control mercury pollution …. North Carolina rested a little bit on its success and could have done more and should have done more,” said Suttles.
Scorecard.org, a clearinghouse site for posting EPA data online, ranks Person County as among the dirtiest localities in the nation. Citing the latest available reporting of federal pollution data, the site ranks Person County in the 90th percentile of dirtiest counties based on total environmental releases, cancer risk score and non-cancer risk score. Overwhelmingly, the main sources of pollution are the two coal-fired plants.
Although pollution wafting in from Person County is not taken into account, the Scorecard.org also gives Halifax County a poor grade for its air and water quality (see sidebar). Halifax ranks in the bottom percentile for cancer and non-cancer risks and in the 80th percentile for overall environmental releases. Driving down the county’s ranking is another big coal plant — the 880 megawatt Clover Power Station.
Although apples-to-apples comparisons can be misleading, the Scorecard.org site points to some major differences in the Person and Halifax county coal facilities. The Clover Power Station was built with advanced scrubber equipment installed, while the technology is just now being added to the Mayo and Semora facilities.
In rough terms the difference shows up in the numbers. In 2002, the latest reporting year available, the Semora plant belched nearly 14 million pounds of pollutants into the air, land and water. The Mayo and Clover plants, each with about a third of the megawatt output, accounted for 5 million and 1.5 million pounds of pollutants, respectively.
“The footprint of coal fired power plants is enormous, because the fact is burning coal is a very dirty process that puts an enormous amount of pollutants into the air and into the water,” said Suttles.
Progress Energy’s Oakley-Lisk says the pollution control equipment being installed at the Mayo and Semora plants will go well beyond mandated reductions under the state’s recently enacted Clean Smokestacks Act, considered one of the toughest air quality laws in the nation. The Clean Smokestacks Act specifically targets the emission of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides — SOx and NO2 for short — which contribute to smog, ozone pollution and acid rain. The legislation has the side effect of reducing particle pollution, including mercury.
She estimated that when the project is complete, sulfur dioxide pollution at the two plants will fall by 95 percent and nitrogen oxide emissions by 85 percent, compared to seven to ten years ago.
Mercury emissions will fall even more dramatically according to NCDENR. Mathers pegged the reduction at 90 percent. In 2002 the Mayo plant released 260 pounds of mercury compounds into the air, EPA data shows.
The Person County upgrades go well beyond the state’s mandateof a three-quarters cut in SOx and NO2 emissions, Oakley-Lisk said. By cleaning up its dirtiest plants, Progress Energy can achieve its statewide goals without having to invest heavily in plants that already are comparatively clean.
The scrubber equipment — contained within side buildings that already are rising up at the two power plants — will render one major change in appearance. From afar, the smokestack emissions at both plants are now all but invisible. Once the scrubber equipment goes online, the stacks will emit a visible white plume: water vapor.
The pollution control equipment will not curtail releases of carbon dioxide, a primary contributor to the greenhouse effect associated with global warming, as the federal government does not regulate such releases, said NCDENR’s Mather. However, the SOx and NO2 reductions will have a noticeable impact on an environmental problem that has bedeviled western North Carolina in particular — haze and acid rain, which have hurt tourism and the environment in the state’s mountainous areas.
“That’s really what got it [the Clean Smokestacks Act] going,” said Mather, who noted that the legislation was pushed by western North Carolina lawmakers concerned by the impact of hazy skies on tourism. “Local legislators up there got the ball rolling on this.”
The law, enacted in 2002, failed the first time it came before the legislature. Mather said it wasn’t until Gov. Mike Easley got involved the next year that the bill passed. Easley struck a deal with utility companies that originally opposed the bill by agreeing essentially to freeze utility rates for five years. A freeze had been slated to come off, which was expected to drive utility rates down. The continuation of the freeze allowed the power companies to collect enough revenue to largely pay for expensive pollution control equipment.
“They [the utilities] were probably looking at rate cuts. By keeping rates level, they were able to pay for this equipment,” said Mather.
Given how the rate freeze ensured a stream of revenue to pay for the pollution control devices, it’s too bad North Carolina didn’t do more to force the power companies to clean up their act, said Suttles, the SELC attorney. He said some of the technologies employed at the Person County plants are state-of-the-art, but some are not.
He cited the example of fine particle pollutants, which can have a greater local effect than other smokestack emissions and are linked to a number of respiratory and pulmonary ailments, including asthma, bronchitis, infection, heart disease and premature death.
“EPA needs to strengthen the standard because fine particle pollution is such a health risk to hundreds of thousands of Americans each year,” said Suttles.
Progress Energy should have been required to install fine fabric and activated carbon filters to remove particle pollutants, he said. Fine fabric filters are relatively expensive, but Suttles said carbon filters are cheap — yet their use is not mandated by North Carolina. “Relative to these other pollution controls, it costs a hundredth of what it costs to put in these SO2 scrubbers,” said Suttles.
Suttles said the cost to individual consumers for additional pollution controls should be fairly cheap — one study showed that if residential power customers bore all the cost of environmental upgrades at coal fired plants, it would add $10-$12 a year to their annual bill. Suttles recounted the testimony of a fisherman at a public hearing to consider mandating further power plant pollution controls. “He said, ‘I pay $21 a year for my fishing license, I’d sure pay that in a year to be able to eat the fish I catch.’
“There are things they [utilities] can do,” said Suttles. “With multiple billion dollar bottom lines, they can afford these controls, we think.”
However, Mather noted that getting North Carolina’s power companies — primarily Progress Energy and Duke Energy — on board was essential to moving the Clean Smokestack Act through the legislature. Compromise was required, he said, to enact a law that is today be being hailed as a benchmark for the rest of the country.
“I would say that most environmental groups were signed on with this and thought it was a great deal, and it’s pretty much been touted around the country as a model for this type of legislation,” Mather said.
The impact will be felt over a much broader area than Halifax County — smokestack emissions can end up settling in valleys and hills several states away — but the clean-up going on in Person County will have a real bearing on local air quality. The project will also create a handful of permanent jobs after the construction work is complete — 20 new technical jobs at the Mayo site alone, said Oakley-Lisk.
Although disagreements exist over how far North Carolina could have pushed the envelope on environmental protection, all sides agree that the Clean Smokestacks Act puts North Carolina on course to beat federal requirements with a shorter timetable than most other states.
“We worked closely with [North Carolina] to get a plan that doable, reasonable and achievable … This is one of those projects where it worked very well,” said Oakley-Lisk.


SIDEBAR

Halifax, Person fare poorly on pollution

How clean is Halifax County?
According to one environmental group, the answer is: not very. Green Media Toolshed (greenmediatoolshed.org) posts EPA data online and allows users to call up reports by zip code. The data, which can be found at www.scorecard.org, is accompanied by the organization’s commentary on potential health risks and a grading system across a range of categories, from cancer-causing compounds to the amount of animal wastes found in a community.
How reliable is the site? Raw data aside, critics say the information is presented without context and does more to mislead than inform. Scorecard.org makes no bones about its mission, exhorting people to get involved in environmental causes. Critics have fired back: After the EPA linked to scorecard.org from its own website, U.S. Rep. Barbara Cubin, R-Wyoming, blasted the outfit as “extremist.” Of the EPA’s decision to link to the site, a Cubin spokesman said, "I think it stems from the fact that EPA is still staffed with a lot of Clinton folks. You can't undo eight years of Clinton administration work in three years of the Bush administration. It's not possible."
However, proponents say it’s important to provide individuals with community-by-community data so they can make up their own minds. The process in admittedly imperfect: Here locally, Halifax County’s scorecard is unchanged by what goes on in Person County, site of two large coal-fired power plants. The same holds true for the ratings of neighboring counties. The presence of coal-fired plants is enough to drive down an individual county’s score even though the effects may be felt broadly over a wide region.
With those caveats in mind, here are some of the raw numbers from the scorecard.org site:
Virginia counties, total environmental releases (2002 data):
n Halifax — 1,900,593 lbs. (14th worst ranked in Va.)
Comparisons:
n Chesterfield — 8,216,934 lbs. (Worst ranked in Va.)
n Person County NC — 19,125,859 lbs. (Worst ranked in NC)

Virginia counties, cancer hazard risk score (known carcinogens measured in terms of benzene-equivalents)
n Halifax — 2,300,000 lbs. (5th worst ranked in Va.)
Comparisons:
n Mecklenburg — 1,200 lbs. (55th from the bottom in Va.)
n Person County NC — 46,000,000 lbs. (Worst ranked in NC)

Virginia counties, non-cancer hazard risk score (measured in terms of pounds of toluene-equivalents)
n Halifax — 3,000,000,000 lbs. (5th worst ranked in Va.)
Comparisons:
n Pittsylvania — 370,000,000 lbs. (22nd worst ranked in Va.)
n Person County NC — 6,400,000,000 lbs. (2nd worst ranked in NC)

For more data and further explanation, visit www.scorecard.org.