APPETITE FOR ENERGY
Ohio power plants respond to growing electricity demand by burning more coal Monday, December 05, 2005 Stories by Spencer Hunt | Photos by Mike Munden THE COLUMBUS DISPATCHBonnie and Chuck Warman say their restored Civil War-era home is often gassed by toxic smoke from the nearby Zimmer power plant near Moscow. Danny Freeman Cheshire Mayor Jim Rife rides past a grassy lot where a church once stood. American Electric Power bought most of the village’s homes after residents complained about pollution from the nearby Gavin power plant. Some residents of Cheshire said acid mists from American Electric Power’s J.M. Gavin plant threaten their health. AEP has said acid levels have been reduced.
MOSCOW, Ohio — Chuck Warman never worried much about the power plant next door.
On most days, smoke from Cinergy’s W.H. Zimmer power station drifted east over Moscow in a lazy white plume. And when the wind pushed the smoke down through this Clermont County village of 244 people, he’d cough, wipe his eyes and shut his doors and windows.
Then one day a visiting friend watched the smoke cross Warman’s front yard and asked, ‘‘Isn’t this dangerous?"
‘‘I didn’t know how to answer," he said. ‘‘It was embarrassing."
Now he and other Moscow residents are suing Cinergy, claiming Zimmer’s smoke is a hazard to their health. The suit contends that recently installed pollution controls actually make the smoke more toxic.
There are 18 coal-burning power plants perched on either side of the Ohio River.
These plants burn more than 50 million tons of coal each year to help feed Ohio’s and the nation’s hunger for electricity.
These plants also make the Ohio River Valley one of the greatest producers of powerplant pollution in the U.S.
Faced with a growing number of studies that link power-plant emissions to lung and heart problems, companies such as American Electric Power point to the hundreds of millions of dollars they’ve spent to cut pollution and the billions more they will spend to meet tougher clean-air standards.
‘‘There is no more aggressive cleanup plan in the country than AEP’s," said Michael Morris, CEO of the Columbus-based company.
But the cleanup efforts often follow long court battles during which power companies, including AEP, fight tougher limits.
AEP, Cinergy and Dayton Power & Light also face lawsuits that accuse them of ignoring rules that would have required deep pollution cuts years ago.
Environmental groups say power companies deliberately drag their feet to protect profits. The groups also say that state environmental regulators turn a blind eye toward power-plant problems.
‘‘It seems like you have to wear them down to the point where they make these changes because they have to," said Staci Putney McLennan, the Ohio Environmental Council’s clean air programs director.
Burning coal
While most Ohio residents probably don’t think about where their electricity comes from, those who live in many Ohio River communities are reminded daily.
A ready supply of water, land and coal made the river a breeding ground for power plants, which tower over these villages.
The smokestacks that rise from FirstEnergy’s W.H. Sammis plant in Jefferson County are visible for miles. The plant is so large that Rt. 7 passes beneath it.
And the plants devour monstrous amounts of coal. The average rail car holds 110 tons of coal. Gavin burns the equivalent of 187 rail cars full of coal each day, 5,682 per month and 68,182 a year. Yet the 7.5 million tons Gavin burns each year amount to less than 15 percent of the coal burned at plants along the river.
The results include hundreds of thousands of tons of nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide, pollutants that help create smog and soot. They also have been historically linked to acid rain problems in East Coast states.
Ohio River power plants released more than 984,565 tons of sulfur dioxide and 268,727 tons of nitrogen oxides in 2004, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says.
Their combined emissions make the Ohio River Valley one of the nation’s most concentrated sources of power plant pollution. National analyses that rank power plant pollution by state split their output among Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky.
If these plants were in one state, that state would rank No. 2 behind Ohio, where power plants released 1.4 million tons of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides.
Both compounds can trigger and worsen breathing conditions, including asthma and bronchitis. Soot can aggravate heart conditions. Buying Cheshire
One of the biggest controversies over Ohio River power plants involves another toxic compound, sulfuric acid, and a centuries-old village.
In 2001, AEP installed two buildingsize filters at its Gavin plant to cut nitrogen-oxides emissions. The changes were ordered by the U.S. EPA to reduce smog.
Though the filters did that job, the same equipment released sulfur trioxide, a chemical that, when combined with steam from the plant’s scrubbers, created immense blue clouds of sulfuric-acid mist.
The mist fell on Cheshire’s 221 residents whenever the wind blew down along the plant’s 830-foot-tall twin stacks.
Residents complained of breathing problems, burning eyes, headaches and white sores on their lips and tongues.
In April 2002, two months after federal health officials confirmed that the plant had put the community at risk, AEP announced it would spend $20 million to buy every home and business in Cheshire.
AEP officials insist the buyout was a business decision to increase a buffer around the plant and expand Gavin’s ability to take in coal from Ohio River barges.
Jim Rife, Cheshire’s current mayor, said the money was the result of negotiations between teams of lawyers representing the town and the company. But the money, and how it was distributed, tore the community apart, he said.
The company paid 3.5 times the homes’ appraised values in return for promises the company wouldn’t be sued over any future health problems. Rife said that was unfair.
‘‘If you lived in a $100,000 house, that meant your health was worth more than a little old lady who lived in a $30,000 home," he said. ‘‘If looks could kill or thoughts could kill, everyone would have been dead."
All that remains of the original village are a few businesses; the village offices; and the homes of a few people, including Rife, who turned down AEP’s offers.
Fearing a new Cheshire
While Cheshire is a ghost of its former self, its story has rippled along the river, sparking similar health fears in the towns that dot the waterway.
In the Meigs County village of Racine, 746 people live across the river from AEP’s Philip Sporn and Mountaineer power plants.
The company installed a filter on Mountaineer in 2004 and is building a set of sulfur-dioxide reducing scrubbers to meet the tougher federal smog standards.
‘‘We don’t want Racine to end up like Cheshire," said Scott Hill, an area resident.
Melissa McHenry, an AEP spokeswoman, said that won’t happen. The company has installed systems to break down the acid before it escapes, she said. Similar systems are in use at Cinergy’s Zimmer plant, but Moscow residents say they don’t work.
On Sept. 1, Dennis Skeene stood in Warman’s front yard in Moscow and pointed at a trail of smoke from the Zimmer plant. It faded from white steam to bluegray.
On ‘‘touchdown" days, when the smoke snakes through town, ‘‘It’s like somebody set the town on fire," said Danny Freeman, a 20-year resident and former Moscow village board member.
‘‘I call it the ‘Zimmer glimmer,’ " said another resident, Dawn Walden.
Bonnie Warman, Chuck’s wife, said the pollution carries a taste ‘‘like chewing on foil." Breathing it gives her a sore throat, she said.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Cincinnati on behalf of Moscow’s residents, claims that Zimmer pollutes the town with soot, sulfuric acid, and mercury and other heavy metals.
The suit demands that Cinergy shut down Zimmer until it complies with Clean Air Act regulations and that it pay damages to town residents.
Skeene, Moscow’s former police chief, said the plant and its pollution have made it impossible to sell his house. He wants Cinergy to buy it.
‘‘Our property values have steadily gone down," he said.
As in Cheshire, the power plant has divided Moscow. Not everyone agrees Zimmer is dangerous.
Suella Logan lives close to the plant but doesn’t have a problem with it. ‘‘I just sit out there on my driveway and watch it," said Logan, who has lived in the area most of her life. ‘‘There shouldn’t be a lawsuit. If they don’t like it, let them get out."
Cinergy spokesman Steve Brash said the plant meets environmental standards and doesn’t have an acid problem. Asked about the blue smoke, Brash said it’s not sulfuric acid.
‘‘The plume will have different color types depending on what exactly the meteorological conditions are and the position of the sun," he said.
Legal troubles
Zimmer isn’t the only Ohio power plant facing a lawsuit. Cinergy, AEP and Dayton Power & Light are being sued by the federal government, East Coast states and advocacy groups.
The suits say the companies ignored a law that required them to install systems to cut pollution when they put in new equipment and made other improvements at the Cardinal, Mitchell, Kammer, Philip Sporn, W.C. Beckjord, Miami Fort and J.M. Stuart power stations.
The companies say changes to boilers, furnace walls and other equipment were routine maintenance.
Most of the lawsuits were filed in 1999, when Bill Clinton was president.
In March, Akron-based FirstEnergy settled a suit filed against its Sammis plant, agreeing to spend $1.1 billion to reduce 212,000 tons of pollutants each year.
Cinergy agreed to settle for $1.4 billion in November 1999, but the company never approved the agreement and the case is back in an Indiana federal court.
Cinergy officials called it a tentative pact that they never were certain they’d sign. Environmental groups said Cinergy found a friendlier president in George W. Bush, who took office a month after the settlement was announced.
A decision in AEP’s case could come next year.
Power’s response
Rob Osborne stood on the roof of the massive Gavin power station overlooking a number of buildings and devices that AEP constructed to meet clean-air regulations.
The plant manager said more than $920 million has been spent at the plant, which cost $650 million to build in 1975.
‘‘This company is about doing what’s right," Osborne said.
These devices have dramatically reduced pollution. Gavin released 374,920 tons of sulfur dioxide in 1990; last year, 33,716 tons.
The plants also employ hundreds of workers and support a regional coalmining industry that employs thousands more.
And the demand for electricity is at an all-time high.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration predicts the nation’s appetite for electricity will grow 25 percent by 2025. The greater need will be driven in part by the increased use of electricity in computers and other high-tech devices and by new, larger houses that need more energy for heating, cooling and lighting.
Ohio River power plants provided a total of 140 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2003, enough to power more than 12 million homes.
That has health and environmental officials saying smog and soot remain a concern.
Tougher federal clean-air standards in Ohio will require a 74 percent cut in nitrogen oxides by 2009 and a 75 percent cut in sulfur-dioxide emissions by 2010.
AEP said it will spend $4.1 billion to meet those standards. Cinergy said it will spend $1.8 billion. FirstEnergy spokeswoman Ellen Raines said the company’s $1.1 billion settlement is a starting point for a larger pollutioncontrol plan.
‘‘We’re really looking at all our options to meet these requirements," she said.
Power companies and their lobbies waged an intense battle to defeat and delay Clean Air Act protections in the 1970s. Tougher smog limits that required power companies to install filters were proposed in 1997 but were delayed by a power-industry lawsuit that pushed the target date to 2004.
The suit was supported by Ohio political leaders, including then-Gov. George V. Voinovich and then-Ohio EPA Director Donald Schregardus, who said the limits would hurt the state’s economy.
That has led many Ohio environmental advocates to accuse the Ohio EPA of being a lap dog for the companies instead of a watchdog. Ohio EPA officials said they take power companies to task for pollution problems.
But records show that, over the past five years, the Ohio EPA has brought up two issues that resulted in $68,000 in fines against Dayton Power & Light and AEP for violating limits on soot in smokestack exhaust.
The Ohio EPA isn’t taking part in the federal lawsuits filed against the power plants. The rules power plants are accused of breaking are too vague, said Ohio EPA Director Joe Koncelik.
‘‘No one knows if they are in compliance with it or not," Koncelik said.
Some power company officials say the money they are spending to meet the new pollution limits make the lawsuits irrelevant.
‘‘It’s the same goal," said Amy Wright, environmental manager for Dayton Power & Light. ‘‘I can’t speak for the people who’ve filed these lawsuits, but these (pollution limits) all get us to the same place."
Conrad Schneider, advocacy director for the Boston-based Clean Air Task Force, said the lawsuits require changes at specific plants. The tougher limits that take effect in 2010 would cover total emissions across states.
‘‘You never really know who is going to reduce what and where," Schneider said. ‘‘It’s some comfort for people to know that air pollution in general is going down, but they are also going to wonder, ‘What’s going on with my plant?’ "
Chuck Warman said he wants answers now.
‘‘If you put your mouth on the end of a tail pipe, that’s not good for you," he said. ‘‘That’s Moscow. We’re pretty much at the end of the tail pipe."