May. 14, 2005
Pollution producers
Clean up power plants before building more
The administrations in Frankfort and Washington boost "clean coal" technologies for increasing the supply of electricity and the demand for coal.
But as long as Kentucky has eight of the nation's dirtiest power plants, it's hard to want new ones.
Even if the new generators are dramatically cleaner, they'll still pollute. And when the power is intended for export to other states, it gets even harder to justify damaging Kentuckians' health to make electricity that Kentuckians don't need.
That's one point to draw from "Dirty Kilowatts: America's Most Polluting Power Plants," by the Environmental Integrity Project (www.environmentalintegrity.org).
Another point: Kentucky power plants are cleaner than just a few years ago. Too bad the Bush administration wants to ease the pressure to keep improving.
The report considered data from the nation's largest power plants, those producing more than 2 million megawatt hours. It analyzed four kinds of pollution -- sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, mercury and carbon dioxide -- that contribute to smog and soot, put a brain-damaging toxin into the environment and contribute to global warming.
The dirtiest plants produce 14 percent of the nation's power but a much higher proportion of the pollution.
Kentucky has 15 power plants producing more than 2 million megawatt hours. Eight were among the top 50 producers of at least one of the pollutants. A sign of progress, only two in Kentucky -- TVA's Paradise and Shawnee power plants -- were among the 50 largest producers of nitrogen oxides or NOx. The others avoided this blacklist because they were required to invest more than $1 billion in better NOx controls, which had the added benefit of providing hundreds of good-paying construction jobs.
The best way to make way for the next generation of coal-fired power plants is for the Bush and Fletcher administrations to insist on cleaning up the ones we already have.
John Blair
800 Adams Avenue Evansville, IN 47713 812-464-5663
In accordance with title 17 U. S. Code, Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior general interest in receiving similar information for research and educational purposes.
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