Saying Goodbye to Wellington Development’s Greene Energy Resource Recovery Project

GASP Hotline Newsletter, Spring 2014.

By Joe Osborne, GASP Legal Director, www.gasp-pgh.org Nearly a decade after it was first conceived, we can finally say goodbye to Wellington Development’s Greene Energy Resource Recovery Project-—a proposed 525 MW waste-coal-fired power plant that would have been located in Cumberland Township, Greene County.

In February 2014, PADEP terminated the air permit for the Greene Energy Resource Recovery Project at Wellington Development’s request. The permit termination appears to mark the end of a coal power project that would have posed a serious and unjustifiable threat to human health and the environment in southwestern Pennsylvania.

For many years, the proposed plant clung to life in spite of:

• its significant environmental impacts (the facility’s air permit would have allowed it to emit thousands of tons of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and carbon monoxide; hundreds of tons of particulate matter, over 100 tons of ammonia, and over 100 tons of volatile organic compounds in any 12-month period);

• lack of any compelling economic justification for building the plant in light of weak demand for generating capacity;

• several legal challenges in state and federal court brought by a coalition of local citizens and environmen- tal organizations including GASP; and

• a protracted, snail-like pace of plant construction that is difficult to reconcile with source operators’ Clean Air Act obligation to complete facility construction “within a reasonable time.”

PADEP authorized construction of the Greene Energy Resource Recovery Project in June 2005. A DEP site inspection in December 2012 noted, “the only sign of any construction are four (4) poured concrete slabs.” REFERENCES:

1. For past reports on the excruciating saga of the Greene Energy Resource Recovery Project, see Hotline Fall 2005, Summer 2006, Winter 2006, Summer 2007, Winter 2007, Winter 2010.

2. 40 CFR §52.21. 3. PADEP Inspection Report – Greene Energy Resource Recovery Project (Dec. 19, 2012).