In-house power plants foul the air, study says
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Some small industrial power plants, which provide heat and electricity to refineries, chemical plants, steel mills and other major manufacturing facilities, pollute the air in Pennsylvania and across the U.S., according to a new study by Earthjustice.
The study said that while just 1,753 of the nation's 14,000 industrial power plants will be required to install controls to meet new federal standards, those facilities produce unhealthy amounts of mercury, lead, chromium and airborne particle pollution.
Regulating them will prevent 8,100 premature deaths a year, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The estimated cost to industry to buy, install and maintain the pollution controls is $1.5 billion a year, while the health care savings are estimated at between $27 billion and $67 billion annually.
Dr. Walter Tsou, a Philadelphia physician who is past president of the American Public Health Association, said industrial power plant emissions are particularly lethal because they contain known toxins and "are escaping any regulation."
Earthjustice, a California-based environmental advocacy organization, released the study today to highlight the air quality impacts of the small power plants, also known as industrial boilers, but also to call attention to repeated congressional efforts, pushed by industry lobbyists, to delay implementation of pollution controls now scheduled for 2015.
In the Pittsburgh region, controls will be needed at industrial boilers in U.S. Steel Corp.'s Edgar Thomson Works in Braddock, its Clairton Coke Works in Clairton and its Irvin Plant in West Mifflin; the Eastman Chemical Resins Inc. facility in West Elizabeth; and the Horsehead Corp. plant in Monaca, Beaver County.
U.S. Steel said it was reviewing the report.
"We have been working diligently with U. S. EPA to develop ... regulations that encourage the continued, beneficial reuse of iron and steel process gases while reducing total emissions from our operations," the company said in a statement.
Pennsylvania has 99 industrial power plants that will need to install pollution controls, the study found, the second most behind North Carolina's 166. And the Keystone State ranks fourth among all states in mercury emissions from those facilities, and between sixth and 13th for emissions of lead, chromium, hydrochloric acid and airborne particles.
First Published February 23, 2012 12:37 pm
