EPA haze plan seen as knotty by utilities

The Environmental Protection Agency has released a proposal to address haze concerns in national parks in Arkansas and Missouri that would require retrofitting six power plants in Arkansas with emission-control scrubbers to curb air pollution at a cost estimated to top $1 billion for utilities.

The EPA action involving Arkansas coal-fired plants was largely expected by industry officials, who first discussed how to address haze standards with the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality years ago. Coal-fired plants are also facing proposed EPA rules on reducing carbon emissions as a part of the federal Clean Power Plan.

The proposed haze plan is new, but the official standards -- established in 1999 under regional haze provisions of the Clean Air Act -- are not. Public comment on the plan ends May 16, and a public hearing will be held April 16 at the Department of Environmental Quality's headquarters at 5301 Northshore Drive in North Little Rock.

An industry and Environmental Quality Department plan looked similar to the EPA plan but was partially rejected by the EPA in 2012, eventually prompting the EPA to issue its own plan earlier this month. The state never submitted a new plan of its own.

EPA spokesman Jennah Durant said its plan addresses visibility in Caney Creek Wilderness Area, the Upper Buffalo Wilderness Area and two parks in Missouri -- the Hercules-Glades Wilderness Area and the Mingo National Wildlife Refuge. Better visibility would mean that park-goers would be able to see more of the natural area at any given time.

Haze is measured in deciviews. When Caney Creek and the Upper Buffalo were last measured for haze, they came in at 26.36 deciviews and 26.27 deciviews, respectively.

The EPA goal is to reduce haze to 11.58 deciviews for Caney Creek and 11.57 deciviews for the Upper Buffalo by 2064 by reducing sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide levels.

But environmental groups like the Sierra Club see the impact reaching far beyond visibility in national parks. Retrofitting power plants with scrubbers will also help improve public health, Arkansas Sierra Club Executive Director Glen Hooks said.

The Clean Air Task Force, a national nonprofit organization, estimates that dozens of deaths and many more emergency room visits or hospital admissions are attributable each year to Arkansas coal-fired power plants through air pollution tied to ailments such as asthma attacks, heart attacks and chronic bronchitis.

Retrofitting the power plants would reduce haze along with the carbon dioxide emissions that the EPA is already targeting.

Entergy Arkansas spokesman Sally Graham said company officials are still looking over the plan and intend to submit comments, although they don't have anything to say publicly yet.

"Our main concern regarding the proposed plan for regional haze is what kind of costs are going to result from the rules and that they not adversely affect customers," Graham said.

Entergy owns three of the power plants implicated in the plan -- the White Bluff, Independence and Lake Catherine plants -- and five of the nine units that would be retrofitted.

The Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corp. owns two power plants in the plan: the Carl E. Bailey and John. L. McClellan generating stations.

The cooperative's director of compliance and support, Curtis Warner, said the state is already meeting current haze standards, although the standards will become more stringent in the future.

"In our opinion, most of the groundwork we would have put in a state plan is what was in the EPA plan," Warner said, adding that the cooperative's officials are questioning the inclusion of the Independence power plant in the plan, given that it was not a part of the state plan.

He said that plant is newer, and officials expected it to be considered in a second phase of haze planning instead of this first one.

Durant said the Independence plant was being considered under a different portion of the haze law than the other plants but noted that the EPA has more flexibility with the plant's role in the plan, given its age.

Officials are already placing two scrubbers on the Flint Creek power plant for $408 million. The cooperative co-owns the plant with Southwest Electric Power Co. The Arkansas Public Service Commission originally opposed the scrubbers, suggesting a possible cheaper conversion to natural gas supplemented with wind power, but eventually approved them.

Stephen Cain, environmental compliance manager for the Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corp., estimated that two scrubbers could cost $300 million to $400 million each at the White Bluff plant. Additionally, he said, a scrubber would have to be placed on the Independence plant, of which the cooperative owns 35 percent.

All scrubbers would have to be installed within five years of the plan's effective date, which would be sometime after the public comment period ends.

The 1,700-megawatt White Bluff and Independence power plants are the only two coal plants in the state that do not have scrubbers or are not currently installing them.

Hooks, who estimated that the cost for scrubbers could exceed $1 billion, said a more progressive approach would be replacing the plants that need scrubbers with renewable energy sources and implementing a statewide energy efficiency program complete with financial incentives for utilities.

"It doesn't make sense to invest billions of dollars to keep these plants running," he said, noting that retrofitting the plants wouldn't suddenly make them clean.

Hooks also noted that the state Public Service Commission would have to consider how the high costs of retrofitting could trickle down to customers.

He said replacing coal plants with wind and solar power facilities would be a start and that making businesses and homes more energy efficient could help make up the difference in needed power supply.

Hooks said he hopes to have an item before the state Public Service Commission considering doubling the state's energy efficiency goals by this summer.

Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality spokesman Katherine Benenati said the department is reviewing the federal plan, which it received March 11.

"We need to evaluate what's been proposed and determine if ADEQ can submit a State Implementation Plan that can be approved to replace the Federal Implementation Plan," Benenati wrote in an email.

Metro on 03/22/2015

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