|
This news story originally provided by
The Charleston Gazette
A proposed Greenbrier County power plant isn’t planning
to use the best available pollution controls as required by
law, three nonprofit groups argued before the state Air
Quality Board Tuesday.
If it did, it would spew out 600,000 fewer pounds of
sulfur dioxide per year — half as much as its permit now
allows — into the air of Greenbrier County, among other
pollutants, the groups’ expert witness testified.
But witnesses for Western Greenbrier Co-Generation, the
power plant’s developer, and the state Department of
Environmental Protection, which approved the pollution
controls, testified that they did follow the law, and the
better scrubbers are not required.
The lengthy hearing lasted past 5 p.m. Tuesday and will
continue today. Both sides will have a response period after
that, so it will probably be several weeks before the board
can make its ruling, chairman Michael Koon said.
The Sierra Club, West Virginia Highlands Conservancy and
Greenbrier River Watershed Association filed their appeal in
May, asking the state to revoke the air quality permit it
had issued to WGC.
Power plants in areas with relatively unpolluted air,
such as Greenbrier County, are required by law to choose the
scrubbers and other pollution controls that filter out the
most pollutants — unless government regulators, such as DEP,
agree that those scrubbers are too expensive or otherwise
infeasible.
In WGC’s case, that is what happened. The best controls
were declared infeasible. But Ranajit Sahu, an air pollution
control expert called by the Sierra Club, said WGC’s
e-mails, telephone records and other evidence indicate that
WGC planned to use the second-best controls all along, and
tailored their legally required analysis to show that they
were the only feasible choices.
WGC’s permit application “had all the right words ... but
what appears is that the decisions were made before, and the
analysis was written to justify the decisions,” Sahu said.
Jerry Joseph, a Pittsburgh environmental engineer who
analyzed the pollution-control choices for WGC’s air quality
permit application, testified that he did the analysis as
the law requires.
He said the best controls were not only infeasible
because of price, but also because one of them would have
required a lot of water that is not available in Rainelle,
where the plant is to be built.
DEP engineer Joe Kessler, who reviewed WGC’s application,
began testifying late Tuesday. He is scheduled to present
most of his testimony today.
Construction is scheduled to start on the 90-megawatt
plant in spring, said Brian Neely of WGC. It has been
promised $107 million from the federal Department of Energy,
which bills it as a “clean coal” demonstration project.
Instead of regular coal, the plant would burn a gigantic
pile of abandoned coal waste near Rupert for fuel.
WGC is a limited liability company owned by the towns of
Rainelle, Rupert and Quinwood.
To contact staff writer Tara Tuckwiller, use e-mail or
call 348-5189.
|
