The EPA is expected to release new rules aimed at cleaning up sulfur dioxide pollution. (Photo courtesy of NASA)
This week, the U-S Environmental Protection Agency will release much-anticipated new rules limiting sulfur dioxide in the air. As Tanya Ott reports, it’s almost certain to result in years of legal battles:
Transcript
This week, the U-S Environmental Protection Agency will release much-anticipated new rules limiting sulfur dioxide in the air. As Tanya Ott reports, it’s almost certain to result in years of legal battles:
When sulfur dioxide spews from smoke stacks and diesel engines it can cause
acid rain, but that’s just the first problem.
“It can cause asthma attacks in children. It can send people to hospital emergency rooms. It can even convert to other chemicals in the air that lead to premature death.”
Frank O’Donnell is president of the non-profit environmental group Clean Air Watch. He says existing rules, which have been around since the 1970s, have a loophole that allows high levels of sulfur dioxide over short periods of time. The new EPA rules will likely close that loophole and significantly restrict the amount allowed into the air.
The oil industry and coal-burning power plants have lobbied against the new rules. They don’t want to pay the billions of dollars it will cost to clean up their smoke stacks.
Memorials to miners and past mining disasters dot the public spaces in rural
parts of southern Illinois. This granite obelisk is in honor of mining near
West Frankfort, which is in the heart of Illinois coal country, and close to
several operating mines. In 1980, Illinois had 18,000 coal miners - now, the
workforce is less than 4,000. Mining experts say new digging permits, new hires
and new investment in Illinois coal signals a comeback, though it's unclear
mining employment will reach former heights. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
John Mead directs the Center for Clean Coal Research at Southern Illinois
University. Mead says the probable comeback of Illinois' coal industry
hasn't fully materialized yet, but he agrees with industry experts who say
cleaner-burning coal-fired power plants are creating a new market for the
state's high-energy resource. By the way, the coal nugget in his palm is the
only coal he could find in his office. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
The exit at an operating mine near Galatia, Illinois. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
This coal fired power plant sits at the corner of the SIU campus in Carbondale,
Illinois. It's built sulfur scrubbers and other technology that allow it to use Illinois coal. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
America has a love-hate relationship
with coal. We burn coal to make half our
electricity, but we’re always fighting coal’s
air pollution. Some regulations decimated
the coal industry in one key state. Shawn
Allee reports miners there are caught
between a slow comeback and another round of
regulation:
Transcript
America has a love-hate relationship
with coal. We burn coal to make half our
electricity, but we’re always fighting coal’s
air pollution. Some regulations decimated
the coal industry in one key state. Shawn
Allee reports miners there are caught
between a slow comeback and another round of
regulation:
Coal was once king of the Southern Illinois economy, but no longer.
Nathan Threewitt lives in the area. He explains mining jobs evaporated.
Nathan Threewitt: “Eighteen years ago, give or take a couple, people went from
making a nice, upper-class living to nothing at all. Couldn’t find work, everybody
had to move.”
Shawn Allee: “Did you have that happen in your own family?”
Threewitt: “Yep. My dad’s got ten brothers and sisters. They went from, everybody
had clothes for school, everybody had food to eat, to, we don’t know how the hell it
was gonna happen.”
Even though Threewitt has a tough history with coal – he’s actually trying to get into the
industry.
In fact, I find him while he’s taking a break from a coal mining training class at Rend
Lake College.
I know at one time, classes like these had been canceled.
I track down instructor David Colombo to see what’s changed.
David Colombo: “This room is where I train miners for the most part.”
Shawn Allee: “What’s this?”
Colombo: “Ugh. This is a high voltage cable.”
Allee: “This is almost as thick as your arm.”
Colombo: “This isn’t the biggest of the bigs, either.”
Right now, only about four thousand Illinois miners need to be familiar with equipment
like this.
But Colombo gets calls from mining companies in the area who need trained workers.
So, his school’s growing to keep up.
Shawn Allee: “Why have faith that you’re going to need space for miners to be
trained?”
David Colombo: “With the mining permitting that’s going on, is the highest it’s been
in thirty years.”
Colombo: “Gentlemen in this afternoon’s class will start sinking a mine within the
next week or two. Right now it just employs ten people, but in a year from now, that
same mine’s probably going to employ a hundred and ten people.”
People use words like rebound and comeback when they describe the Illinois coal
industry.
To understand what happened, you have to dial back a little.
“It was really the effect of Clean Air Act amendments of 1990.”
This is John Mead. He heads coal research at Southern Illinois University.
He says Illinois coal is blessed with high energy, but it’s cursed with sulfur that caused
acid rain and lung disease. The amendments aimed to cut that.
“Most utilities were able to switch to lower-sulfur coal, and that’s just what they
did.”
In fact, utilities opened new mines out West where the coal has less sulfur.
As for an Illinois coal turn-around?
“Today, sulfur and other materials in the coal can be controlled pretty effectively
with technology.”
So, now Illinois coal can better compete with lower-sulpher coal.
But here’s the thing. There could be another pollution clamp-down in the works.
You know about global-warming, right? Well, carbon dioxide’s a big cause, and coal
produces carbon dioxide in spades.
Scientists say cutting coal emissions would be a quick way to cut carbon.
So, miners in Southern Illinois get mixed messages – the country wants their coal again,
but maybe not for long.
Miner-to-be Nathan Threewitt says he’s thought this through.
Nathan Threewitt: “Well, if anybody looked at the economics of it, it’s gonna go
back. Coal used to be fifteen dollars a ton, it’s now 65 dollars a ton. You’re gonna
have these coal companies with coal left in the ground, it used to not be worth it to
get the money out, now it’s worth it.”
Shawn Allee: “You like those odds.”
Threewitt: “Yeah, I do. I’m rolling the dice on it.”
Threewitt figures, he’s got time to build a career from coal, while America makes up its
mind just how clean it wants its coal-fired electricity.
A pipe has been connected to the flue gas duct at We Energies' coal-burning power plant near Milwaukee. The pipe will suck out a small amount of gas and treat it with chilled ammonia, allowing CO2 to be separated and captured. (Photo by Erin Toner)
Workers are building a carbon capture system at We Energies' coal-burning power plant near Milwaukee. The system is designed to remove up to 90 percent of CO2 emissions. (Photo by Erin Toner)
Carbon capture technology is being tested for the first time in the country at a coal-burning power plant near Milwaukee. If it works, it could be added to existing power plants, or incorporated into new ones. (Photo by Erin Toner)
Coal-burning power plants have done a lot to reduce
pollution that leaves their smokestacks. But the power
industry is not controlling the main greenhouse gas –
carbon dioxide. That could change in the next decade.
One utility is about to begin the first test ever of technology
to reduce CO2 emissions at power plants. Erin Toner
reports:
Transcript
Coal-burning power plants have done a lot to reduce
pollution that leaves their smokestacks. But the power
industry is not controlling the main greenhouse gas –
carbon dioxide. That could change in the next decade.
One utility is about to begin the first test ever of technology
to reduce CO2 emissions at power plants. Erin Toner
reports:
When you think about air pollution, you might think of power plants with giant brick chimneys pumping dark
smoke into the sky. here’s not as much of that stuff being released
into the air as 30 years ago. That’s because power plants have added equipment to control certain types of pollution:
“Okay, just to give you an idea of what we’re looking at,
this big silver building is where all the particulate is
removed, we’re going from that toward the stacks, so
we’re looking at the discharge emissions control
devices…”
Ed Morris oversees environmental projects at We Energies’
coal-burning power plant in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin. In
the past few years, it’s installed equipment that’s cut sulfur
and nitrogen emissions by up to 95 percent. Now it’s going
after carbon dioxide, or CO2, the most prevalent manmade
greenhouse gas that no utility has yet controlled.
By the end of the year, the We Energies plant will begin the
first test in the country of a new technology called “carbon
capture:”
“We are designing the technology to achieve up to 90
percent CO2 removal.”
Sean Black is with Alstom, the company that designed the
process. It will inject chilled ammonia into a tiny stream of
boiler gas. This will theoretically allow the CO2 to be
separated and captured. The test will see how much can be
removed before the gas is sent up the chimney.
Black says after the test in Wisconsin, it’ll go on to a full-
scale demonstration at an American Electric Power coal-
burning plant in West Virginia:
“And that will provide the marketplace with the
credibility that this technology is ready for commercial
deployment.”
The coal-burning power industry is trying to get carbon
capture ready because it believes the government will soon
start regulating CO2 emissions.
Kris McKinney manages environmental policy for We
Energies, and its pilot CO2 program:
“Technology doesn’t exist today to capture, let alone
store, the CO2 emissions, reductions that would be
required in the event that federal legislation is passed.”
Power companies have been criticized for moving too
slowly on cutting CO2 pollution. Some environmentalists
say utilities could have been doing more earlier, but won’t
spend the money on new technology if they’re not required
to by the government.
We Energies’ Kris McKinney says they’re wrong about the
status of the technology, but right about the money. He
says that’s because the cost of adding the CO2 reduction
equipment has to be passed on to customers:
“Whatever happens has to happen over a longer period
of time…it needs to be thought out in a way that doesn’t
cause dramatic cost impacts, unanticipated cost
impacts.”
McKinney says rushing to add new pollution controls
would be a huge risk. And in the case of carbon capture,
he could be right.
“The publicity that this is receiving is disproportionate
to the actual results that they have achieved. And there
are fundamental scientific reasons to question whether
this can be done.”
Alstom, the company developing chilled ammonia carbon
capture, says it won’t comment on the government’s report
because it hasn’t been made public. Company officials do say they’re confident the technology will work. They’re predicting the full-scale process will be
ready to retrofit existing plants or to build into new ones in
five years.
If so, it’ll be one option for a power industry that’s under
increasing pressure – and likely government mandates – to
clean up its dirty legacy.
A cleaner-burning diesel fuel is now available at many more gas stations around the US. Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Transcript
A cleaner-burning diesel fuel is now available at many more gas stations around the US. Chuck Quirmbach reports:
The fuel has much less sulfur than conventional diesel. The US Environmental Protection Agency says as more trucks, buses, and cars with diesel engines switch to the low sulfur fuel, there should be major improvements in air quality. The fuel is expected to cost a few cents more per gallon, and some truckers predict slightly reduce engine performance. But independent trucker Odell Hawkins of Chicago says he hopes the environment will benefit.
“I’m sure they know what they’re doing to try and take a lot of the emissions out of the air.”
Come January, heavy duty trucks will have to meet tougher pollution limits. Some vehicle manufacturers are making a new generation of diesel engines to help achieve that goal and take advantage of the low sulfur diesel fuel.
Tom Micheletti (right), and Excelsior Energy Vice President of Environmental Affairs, Bob Evans (left). They are locating where the proposed power plant will be built near the town of Taconite, Minnesota. (Photo by Bob Kelleher)
Tom Micheletti, Co-President of Excelsior Energy, the company formed to build the Mesaba Energy project: a 600 megawatt Integrated Combined Cycle Coal Gasification plant. (Photo by Bob Kelleher)
Acid rain, mercury pollution, and huge amounts of the heat-trapping gas carbon-dioxide are the down sides of burning coal in electric power plants. And yet, some energy experts are saying America should be using more coal. They say new coal technology can produce electricity with few of the pollution problems of traditional coal power plants. Bob Kelleher reports:
Transcript
Acid rain, mercury pollution, and huge amounts of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide are the down sides of burning coal in electric power plants. And yet, some energy experts are saying America should be using more coal. They say new coal technology can produce electricity with few of the pollution problems of traditional coal power plants. Bob Kelleher reports:
Coal has a well deserved bad reputation. Typical coal burning power plants release mercury, sulfur, nitrogen oxides, and lots of carbon dioxide. Those releases mean toxins in the air, soot, acid rain, and many believe global warming. But Tom Micheletti says there’s a way to use coal with very little pollution.
Using heat, steam, pressure, and oxygen, coal can be broken down to a relatively clean gas, and a handful of other chemical products. The gas is burned, to turn generators and produce electricity. The technology is called Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle. Micheletti says, the technology isn’t new, but applying it this way is.
“All we’re doing is marrying the gasification technology, with a technology that’s been well established, the combined cycle gas technology – power plant technology. And all we’re doing is simply putting those two technologies together.”
Micheletti is Co-President of Excelsior Energy, a company formed to build the nation’s first large scale coal gasification electric power plant in northeast Minnesota. At 600 megawatts, it would dwarf demonstration plants now online in Indiana and Florida.
Some experts say coal gasification is not only promising, it’s more practical than nuclear power, natural gas, solar or wind. Daniel Schrag is a climatologist and head of the Harvard University Center for the Environment.
“We have a lot of coal in the US. We’re very fortunate that way. The problem is that coal produces more carbon dioxide per unit energy than any other fossil fuel. And so, when we burn coal and make electricity, it’s really bad for the climate system.”
Schrag says there’s more carbon dioxide around us now than humans have ever experienced. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. Most scientists believe it blankets the earth, forcing temperatures higher.
Schrag says, when used to generate electricity, coal gasification has big advantages over conventional power plants, because it can capture CO2.
“You get more energy for the amount of coal you put in, and that’s good for carbon emissions. The other thing is that it seems to be cheaper in an IGCC plant, or a gasification plant, to capture the carbon dioxide after one extracts the energy from the coal, and then makes it much easier to capture it and inject it into a geological reservoir.”
The key, Schrag says, is a process called sequestration. You capture, and then sequester it, or lock that carbon dioxide away, where it won’t escape into the atmosphere. It’s already being done.
This is the Dakota Gasification Company, just outside Beulah, North Dakota. Here they turn coal into a burnable gas and almost a dozen other products. They also produce plenty of carbon dioxide, but the CO2 is not vented into the air; it’s trapped and compressed. That’s the noise.
The CO2 is piped more than 200 miles into Canada where it’s pumped into oil wells, forcing the last oil out and leaving the CO2 underground. Near oceans it can be pumped under deep ocean sediments, where it stays put.
And that’s all very good, but others say even good power plants might be a bad idea.
Ross Hammond is with the Minnesota based organization Fresh Energy. Hammond says gasification’s proponents are overlooking conservation and the opportunities for clean energy.
“When we’ve exhausted all the clean options including biomass and photovoltaics, and wind and the other options, then we need to look at coal.”
But Harvard’s Daniel Schrag says it’s not as simple as pushing money toward pollution free energy.
“And the answer is complicated. The answer is perhaps not. It may be that coal is so cheap that even the extra cost of capturing the carbon and storing it underground may still make it cheaper than the alternatives, than wind and solar.”
Schrag says we’ll need it all – nuclear, hydro, wind and biomass. But to satisfy the nation’s hunger for energy, he says we’ll need coal – best used in coal gasification.
Low-sulfur fuel is now available to everyone, even if they haven't realized it yet. (Photo by Pam Roth)
A quiet revolution of cleaner air began this year for cars
and trucks. Motorists might not know it, but they’ve been burning
low-sulfur fuel as part of a requirement under the federal Clean Air
Act. The requirement was put in place during the Clinton Administration.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mike Simonson reports:
Transcript
A quiet revolution of cleaner air began this year for cars and trucks. Motorists might
not know it, but they’ve been burning low-sulfur fuel as part of requirement under the
federal Clean Air Act. The requirement was put in place during the Clinton Administration.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mike Simonson reports:
Low-sulfur fuel is sometimes referred to as “green gas.” The gas isn’t really colored green.
But if it was, people might have noticed that they’re pumping different gas. For two years,
refineries in the United States have been investing millions of dollars to produce the new gas.
Dave Podratz is the manager of the Murphy Oil refinery in Superior, Wisconsin. He says his
refinery spent 26 million dollars to begin making the gas since October.
“It’s not the kind of thing you would notice, the average consumer going to the pump probably
wouldn’t even notice it watching tail pipe emissions, but the sufur dioxide emissions are
definitely going down.”
Podratz says the new fuel cut the amount of sulfur by 90 percent. And other tail pipe
emissions are going down as well. That’s because low sulfur fuel improves the efficiency
of your car’s catalytic converter, Which, in turn, reduces the amount of pollutants like
nitrogen oxide and carbon monoxide.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mike Simonson.
The Environmental Protection Agency says a new rule will cut down on pollution from stationary diesel engines. It applies to industrial equipment like backhoes and forklifts, and to farm tractors. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:
Transcript
The Environmental Protection Agency says a new rule will cut down on pollution from
stationary diesel engines. It applies to industrial equipment like backhoes and forklifts,
and to farm tractors. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:
The EPA says the measure will prevent up to 12,000 premature deaths, a million lost
work days, and 15,000 heart attacks every year.
The new rule aims to do two things: clean up diesel fuel, and clean the exhaust from
diesel engines. Doug Aburano is with the EPA.
“The engine manufacturers have agreed to produce a catalyst that would reduce
emissions from these engines, while we also have an agreement from the diesel producers
to reduce the sulfur content to such an extent that the sulfur would not poison the
catalysts that the engine manufacturers are doing. So you have to do a collaborative
approach like that to get to the huge reductions we’re looking at.”
Aburano says emissions of soot and smog will be cut by 90%. It will take several years
to accomplish that, as businesses and farms replace old equipment. Health and
environmental organizations are welcoming the measure.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.
The EPA is planning to regulate smoke
from diesel engines in farm and construction equipment. Photo courtesy of NESCAUM.
You see them every time you pass a construction site: big machines belching thick diesel smoke. The smoke isn’t just annoying. It causes major health and environmental problems. Now, after years of dealing with other issues, the EPA is taking on this major source of uncontrolled pollution: emissions from farm and construction equipment. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Halpert looks at the challenges the EPA faces in this far-reaching regulatory effort:
Transcript
You see them every time you pass a construction site. Big machines belching thick diesel smoke. The smoke isn’t just annoying. It causes major health and environmental problems. Now, after years of dealing with other issues, the EPA is taking on this major source of uncontrolled pollution: emissions from farm and construction equipment. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Halpert looks at the challenges EPA faces in this far-reaching regulatory effort.
Emissions from diesel engines create problems for both the environment and people’s health. Diesels release nitrogen oxides, which are a factor in acid rain and smog. They also spew very fine particulates that can lodge deep in the lung when inhaled. And that causes respiratory problems.
Controlling these emissions is no easy task. That’s because most diesel engines still burn fuel containing high amounts of sulfur. The sulfur clogs up existing pollution control devices. And that makes it a lot tougher to come up with ways to reduce emissions. But Christopher Grundler, deputy director of the EPA’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality in Ann Arbor, Michigan, says its an important challenge.
“In the year 2007 we estimate that off road or non-road emissions will make up over 40% of the air pollution from mobile sources or transportation sources, so it’s a big deal.”
In tackling air pollution, EPA’s first job was to clean up gasoline car emissions. Now its moving onto diesels. The agency’s first challenge came when they issued a rule for highway trucks last year. That plan drops sulfur content in diesel fuel from 500 parts per million to 15 parts per million. It also reduces overall diesel emissions by 90% by the year 2007. The EPA now wants to use this rule as a model for farm and construction equipment as well. But the agency is likely to face opposition from refiners, who are fighting the on road rule. Jim Williams is with the American Petroleum Institute.
“We feel that the ability of the refining industry to make sufficient volumes of 15 ppm in the timeframe that EPA wants us to is highly questionable, whether we can do that. We’ve done some studies that show there will be supply shortfalls with the 15-ppm limit.”
Williams is pushing to phase in the requirement over a longer period. He says that would give refiners more time to produce the necessary quantities of low sulfur fuel. Until then, refiners also want to continue providing high sulfur fuel.
But Engine Manufacturers don’t like that idea. They’ve agreed to support tough standards only if the switchover to low sulfur fuel happens quickly. Jed Mandel runs the Engine Manufacturers Association. He’s worried that if cheaper, low sulfur fuel remains abundant; users could continue relying on the dirtier fuel.
“If there are dual fuels available — if there’s cleaner fuel on the marketplace for some time, as well as higher sulfur dirtier fuel, and there’s a price differential in that fuel, there will be a disincentive for users to buy the cleanest engines.”
Mandel says that could cause a delay in purchasing these engines for several years.
Like Mandel, Jason Grumet, executive director of the Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management, also wants tight standards. Northeast states, plagued with acid rain and smog caused largely by these diesels, are pushing the EPA to develop the tightest standards possible to meet clean air goals and also to better protect equipment operators.
“The particles from diesel emissions can lodge very deep within the human lung and we know that these particles are carcinogens, so for folks who work with construction equipment every day or on construction sites, for people who farm or plow fields for several hours a day, we think that the emissions of diesel pollutants cause a very substantial and real threat to their health.”
(sound of tractor)
Herb Smith isn’t worried about his health. Smith hops off his tractor and stands on the land that his family has farmed in Ida Township, Michigan since 1865. Despite years of inhaling diesel fumes, Smith said he’s in perfect physical condition. Though he supports regulations to control diesel emissions, he’s worried that the EPA will place undue hardship on farmers.
“I am concerned about fuel costs because our margin in farming is very slim and anything we add to fuel costs, we have to absorb it.”
Smith fears that some of the smaller farmers may not be able to bear higher fuel and engine costs and could go out of business.
Despite the many different viewpoints on the issue, EPA’s Grundler is confident that his agency can develop a rule that will bring tremendous public health benefits at a reasonable cost.
“We’ve shown we can do it for cars and SUVs. We’ve shown it can be done for heavy duty on highway engines. I’m absolutely certain it can be done for these sorts of engines as well.”
The agency expects to issue a technical report outlining emission control options by the end of the year. A proposal is due by the middle of next year. For The Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Julie Halpert.
American Electric Power is working to stop blue clouds of sulfuric acid from descending on towns near the Ohio River. Ironically, the clouds are a by-product of a 200-million dollar system installed in May to help curb smog-producing emissions from the General James M. Gavin Power Plant. The search for a solution is being watched by other power plants in the U.S. that have to comply with stricter anti-smog regulations put in place by the federal government.
Blue clouds of sulfuric acid have descended upon towns in southeastern Ohio and West Virginia more than a dozen times since May. The clouds are from smoke stacks at American Electric Power’s General James M. Gavin plant in rural Cheshire, Ohio. It’s one of the largest coal-burning power plants in North America. The company blames a new 200 million dollar pollution control system for releasing more toxic emissions. If they’re right, other Midwestern power companies may face similar troubles when trying to comply with federal clean air laws. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Natalie Walston reports:
Transcript
Blue clouds of sulfuric acid have descended upon towns in south-eastern Ohio and West Virginia more than a dozen times since may. The clouds are from smoke stacks at American Electric Powers General John M. Gavin plant in rural Cheshire, Ohio. It’s one of the largest coal-burning power plants in North America. The company blames a new 200-million dollar pollution control system for releasing more toxic emissions. If they’re right, other midwestern power companies may face similar troubles when trying to comply with federal clean air laws. The great lakes radio consortium’s Natalie Walston reports.
The small, rundown airport in Mt. Pleasant sits on a flat part of the hills of West Virginia.
It’s surrounded by thick trees. Its rural enough here that it’s common to see wild turkeys dashing across the runways. One summer afternoon airport manager Ben Roush looked out his window. But instead of seeing a plane land … he saw thick smoke clinging to the tops of the trees.
“It looked like, uh, exhaust out of a car or something like that. It wasn’t black smoke it was blue. Very, very visible.”
After the smoke appeared, his phone began to ring.
“The fire department down here called up here and wanted to know if we had a fire up here because it was all in these … it settled to the ground. And, it was in those trees.”
The clouds contain high concentrations of sulfuric acid. That’s not normal … even this close to a power plant that burns coal with a high sulfur content. For years, most coal-burning power plants have had pollution control devices called “scrubbers” to deal with that sulfur. The scrubbers do just what the name implies – they scrub the air clean of sulfur dioxide as well as some other pollutants. But, they don’t do a good job in removing nitrous oxide. Nitrous oxide is blamed in part for causing acid rain and smog.
Paul Chodak is manager of American Electric Power’s Optimization Group. He says AEP installed a selective catalytic reduction system … or SCR … in an effort to remove nitrous oxide. Chodak says the SCR system is a relatively new technology. And, so far, it and the scrubber aren’t working well together. That’s because they are combining to make sulfuric acid, but in a different form. And that form then gets released into the air.
“The SO3 … or sulfuric acid is in very fine droplets … sub-micron size droplets. Very, very tiny. And they’re so small that they travel through the scrubber and they’re not removed. So, the scrubber works very well on the gas in removing SO2. However, it’s not very effective in removing SO3.”
Chodak says this is all because of an effort to reduce emissions that cause acid rain and smog in eastern seaboard states. But… as AEP scrambles to stop polluting the air hundreds of miles away … people who live beneath the smoke stacks claim their health is being sacrificed. They say that in the summer, when the sulfuric acid clouds move in it’s difficult to breathe.
(natural sound of NASCAR race and drunk people carrying on)
Gallipolis is a small city five miles south of the power plant. Today there’s a small crowd of people gathered at Sunny’s bar and grille. People here will only give their first names to an out of town reporter. A man named Steve is drinking a beer at a table with his sister. He says fallout from the plant makes the paint peel off cars.
“All that acid and stuff goes on these cars. They gotta repaint the cars … so you know it’s tearin’ us up. Our bodies. And, like I say, we worry about our kids and grandkids more. We’re old enough that it’s not gonna bother us no more.”
His sister Tammy drags slowly on a cigarette as Steve talks.
When he finishes, she jumps in to say that since the blue clouds started showing up, everyone in town has become sick.
“I have health problems. I cough all the time. Allergies all the time. Allergies to something’. Runny nose. Constantly. You know, I think everyone in town has health problems that live around here.”
But AEP claims the air is cleaner than it was before the SCR system was installed. Paul Chodak says the air turned blue this summer because the sulfuric acid reacted with sunlight on hot, humid days. He says people become scared because they could actually see what they were breathing.
“The hard thing for people to understand is that what is coming out of the stack is significantly cleaner than what was coming out before. This is an improvement from a pollution control perspective. However, it has created this local phenomena that is a problem. And, AEP is moving to address that and we will solve it.”
Sulfuric acid measurements taken by the company and examined by Ohio and U.S. EPA researchers meanwhile don’t show a major sulfuric acid problem. But there are no state standards in place in Ohio for levels of gaseous sulfuric acid in the air.
Kay Gilmer of the Ohio EPA says emissions from AEP have exceeded sulfuric acid standards set by other states. However, she says people near the plant stacks aren’t in immediate danger. But she hesitates to say the air is perfectly safe to breathe.
“We didn’t have anything that would um … that we would … that we looked at that was exceptionally high. But, that was, I don’t want to say that to say we’re not concerned with the problem.”
Meanwhile, people near the plant say they’re tired of having their health jeopardized so people far away from them can breathe easier. They are working with state environmental groups to possibly fight the power plant in court.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Natalie Walston.
The Great Lakes region is home to major power producers. But along with the electricity they make comes some amount of air pollution. When coal-fired power plants in Illinois and Ohio emit sulfur dioxides, prevailing winds blow them to the Northeast, where they can fall as acid rain. Several northeast states are suing those power plants to clean up their emissions. Earlier this summer, a professor at Clarkson University in northern New York coordinated a unique study to learn more about the life cycle of air pollution, from where it’s produced to where it lands. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein has the story:
Transcript
The Great Lakes region is home to major power producers. But along with the electricity they make comes some amount of air pollution. When coal-fired power plants in Illinois and Ohio emit sulfur dioxides, prevailing winds blow them to the Northeast, where they can fall as acid rain. Several northeast states are suing those power plants to clean up their emissions.
Earlier this summer, a professor at Clarkson University in northern New York coordinated a unique study to learn more about the life cycle of air pollution, from where it’s produced to where it lands. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein has the story.
Chemical engineering professor Phil Hopke will take any opportunity to get out of his office and over to his field lab. It consists of a concrete slab amongst the weeds in a corner of the local airport. Installed on the concrete are monitors he uses to find out exactly what’s in the air we breathe.
(sound of opening lock)
Hopke unlocks a gate in a chainlink fence. You can already hear a strange hum in the distance. It gets louder as Hopke strides up to one of three white machines the size of dishwashers.
“Come out and change the filters once a day. This one’s for organic constituents in the air.”
He pulls out what looks like an air filter for your furnace. These machines suck in air. They leave a unique footprint of chemicals on the filter that represents what was in the air in this place on this day — chemicals like sulfur dioxide and mercury. Hopke will send these filters to specialty labs around the world to be analyzed.
There are hundreds of stations like this in North America. Groups of researchers study daily air quality for every region of the country. They examine how things like traffic and smokestacks might affect the air we breathe.
But Hopke says they mostly focus on their own areas. They don’t often coordinate studies to see how the chemicals they find move from region to region.
“It struck me a couple of years ago, particularly in the Northeast, that we have these groups talking to one another.”
Working with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Hopke convinced 26 sites in the East, from Texas to Toronto, to measure the same stuff on the same days. They chose the whole month of July.
It’s perhaps the largest simultaneous air sampling effort ever conducted in this country. When the data’s complete, the study will track the lifespan of pollution, from when it leaves a smokestack or a car’s tailpipe to when it is taken up by a tree or your lungs.
But scientists can’t just follow one molecule of pollution from a car in St. Louis to a lake in Michigan. They have to make models of how the chemicals move, like how meteorologists make weather maps to trace storm systems. As if that’s not complicated enough, says Hopke, naturally occurring chemicals make the job even tougher.
“You have to keep in mind that the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia are blue because of natural photochemical smog, particles being formed because of the pine materials that come off. Those materials that you smell are chemically reactive and will undergo the same type of smog reactions as human emitted materials.”
So researchers use techniques to separate out the “man-made” pollutants from the “natural” pollutants. Next they look for high concentrations of, say, sulfur dioxide in Chicago on July 15th. Then they follow those high levels east with prevailing winds. They look for high sulfur dioxide levels in Ohio or New York a few days later. After doing this many times in July for many types of chemicals, the researchers hope patterns will begin to emerge.
Hopke sits on a scientific advisory committee that helps the EPA develop pollution standards. He says this coordinated study will bring stronger science to the EPA’s sometimes controversial decisions.
“Suppose I require all power plants to reduce their sulfur dioxide emissions by twenty percent. What does that do for me for particle concentrations in New York City? What will that do? Will that get us where we want in terms of clean air?”
With a study this large in scope, the answers to those questions won’t come quickly. The massive amount of data gathered in the study will take a few years to interpret.
In the meantime, Hopke and the EPA are planning another cooperative sampling effort for wintertime, when temperatures and people’s habits are different from summer.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m David Sommerstein.
The EPA is expected to release new rules aimed at cleaning up sulfur dioxide pollution. (Photo courtesy of NASA)
