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Despite progress, Ohio remains No. 1 in the US in toxic pollution
By Spencer Hunt
Columbus Dispatch
COLUMBUS
Year after year, the smoke belched from coal-fired power plants help make Ohio the No. 1 state in the nation for toxic air pollution.
Tougher federal pollution limits and environmental lawsuits aimed at cleaning up power plants have put the state on a crash diet. From 2005 through 2009, Ohio power plants eliminated 37.1 million pounds of health-threatening toxins, which emerge as plumes of hydrochloric and sulfuric acids laced with bits of arsenic, barium, lead and mercury.
Though Ohio still leads the nation, with a total 75 million pounds of airborne toxins released in 2009, an analysis of federal pollution data shows the changes at power plants spurred a statewide 41 percent decline in industrial air pollution since 2005.
The changes stem from recently installed pollution filters at large power plants and from decisions to shut down or ‘idle’ smaller plants where filters are deemed too expensive.
“This shows what can be done when the rules are enforced,” said Eric Schaeffer, director of the Environmental Integrity Project advocacy group..
Power company officials say Ohio’s sour economy had an impact, too. American Electric Power and FirstEnergy officials said their plants generated 16 percent and 18 percent less electricity, respectively, last year, a factor that also cut pollution.
“There wasn’t as much demand,” said Melissa McHenry, an AEP spokeswoman.
McHenry said new scrubbers and filters installed at the Conesville station in Coshocton County helped cut that plant’s pollution by 84 percent. Conesville emitted 6.3 million pounds of toxins in 2005, but just over 1 million pounds in 2009.
Pollution from FirstEnergy’s Sammis plant, along the Ohio River near Stratton, dropped 48 percent since 2005. It would have been more, but work to install scrubbers and other filters called selective catalytic reactors required temporary shutdowns, spokesman Mark Durbin
The changes at Sammis and other plants were done to meet stricter U.S. EPA pollution limits that called for steep reductions in pollutants linked to smog and acid rain. The filters also were expected to reduce airborne toxins.
At the same time, power companies were defending themselves in federal courts. Lawsuits the U.S. EPA filed in 1999 accused AEP, FirstEnergy, and other power companies of making major upgrades to old coal plants without installing required pollution filters.
AEP agreed in a 2007 settlement to spend $6.6 billion to cut pollution at 16 plants, including five in Ohio.
The effect the poor economy had on pollution is hard to measure. Power company officials have blamed low demand for electricity as the main reason they will use many smaller plants only when demand peaks.
AEP announced in June that it will idle its Picway plant in Lockbourne. FirstEnergy will idle its Lake Erie area Bayshore and Eastlake plants.
None of the plants have scrubbers. Nick Akins, AEP’s vice president of generation, said in April 2009 that the high cost of adding scrubbers to Picway and other old small plants to meet pollution limits would make them too expensive to run.
Ellen Raines, a FirstEnergy spokeswoman, said it only makes sense to shut down these plants when prices are low. ‘The first plants to come off-line are the less-efficient, smaller units,’ she said.