A coalition of companies that depend on coal-fired power plants in Arkansas -- including Entergy Arkansas and the Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corp. -- has filed a motion to intervene in an already settled federal lawsuit over a new plan for reducing haze in Arkansas and Missouri national wildlife areas.
The lawsuit, settled late last year, led the Environmental Protection Agency to issue a plan to reduce power plant emissions that could cost utilities more than $1 billion.
The haze plan was required in an amendment to the Clean Air Act passed by Congress in 1999. The law calls for the reduction of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide in the atmosphere at Caney Creek and along the Upper Buffalo River in Arkansas and in two Missouri parks, the Hercules-Glades Wilderness Area and the Mingo National Wildlife Refuge.
The haze plans' focus is on visibility, but proponents have argued that it also will benefit people who have respiratory illnesses.
The state had no plan to comply with the law until 2009, when the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality drafted a state implementation plan. That plan was later rejected in part by the EPA.
In March, the EPA settled with the Sierra Club, which had sued the agency in 2014 in an effort to produce a new plan that would comply with the law.
On Friday, Balanced Energy Arkansas, a coalition of companies and organizations promoting "clean coal," filed a motion to intervene in the case, joining Nucor-Yamato Steel.
Attorneys for the group cited a five-year progress report submitted to the EPA in regards to the haze rule that constitutes a revision to the state's implementation plan from 2009.
"Based on information and belief, BEA asserts that the State of Arkansas is preparing a supplement to the RHR [Regional Haze Rule] SIP [state implementation plan] for submission to the EPA," attorneys for the group wrote Friday. The filing goes on to say that the Sierra Club is not entitled to relief in the case.
The five-year progress report is required by law, EPA spokesman Jennah Durant said Tuesday.
While it would constitute a revision of the state implementation plan, it would not alter the plan in a way that would get it into compliance with the federal rule, Durant said.
In May, attorneys for Nucor-Yamato Steel, which owns a plant in northeast Arkansas, argued that the costs associated with retrofitting the power plants would raise electricity prices and negatively affect the company as a large electricity consumer.
Attorneys for the company also accused the EPA and Sierra Club of improperly colluding to settle the case, saying that both organizations stood to benefit from settling the case.
Attorneys for the Sierra Club argued that Nucor-Yamato Steel's rights were not being impaired and that its intervention was "untimely" because the federal implementation plan had already been issued.
A judge has not ruled yet on whether Nucor-Yamato Steel or Balanced Energy Arkansas may intervene in the case.
The federal implementation plan produced by the EPA in March suggested that reductions would be achieved through retrofitting 11 units at seven power plants in the state.
Entergy Arkansas and the Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corp. own 65 percent and 35 percent of the two largest coal plants in the state, the Independence plant in Newark and the White Bluff plant in Redfield, both producing 1,700 megawatts of electricity.
Those plants, the two largest electricity generators in the state, have each operated for more than 30 years without emissions-controlling scrubbers. They are the only two coal plants in the state without them.
The state implementation plan was largely similar to the federal plan, except for the inclusion of the Independence plant, which isn't required by law to be included until 2018.
Metro on 06/10/2015