Is TVA's smog fouling our air?

Is TVA's smog fouling our air?

Improvements could come sooner at consumers' cost

By STEVE DOYLE
Times Staff Writer
steved@htimes.com

North Carolina's attorney general, Roy Cooper, says the Tennessee Valley Authority's Colbert and Widows Creek power plants – both about an hour from Huntsville – are contributing to smog, acid rain and other problems in the Smoky Mountains.

Cooper recently threatened to sue TVA in federal court unless the public utility significantly reduces smoke-stack emissions at Colbert, Widows Creek and seven other plants in Tennessee and Kentucky that generate electricity by burning coal.

The Colbert steam plant, located along the Tennessee River in the Shoals, has five coal boilers but only one scrubber planned.

Every day, TVA's aging boilers burp wispy plumes of nitrogen oxides (NOx), a key ingredient of ozone, and sulfur dioxides (SO2), tiny particles known to burrow into the lungs, triggering asthma and other breathing woes.

A plume can drift hundreds of miles; where it goes depends on the wind.

If the Colbert Fossil Plant, near Tuscumbia, and Widows Creek, outside Stevenson in Jackson County, are causing pollution in the Smokies, how's the air closer to home?

Depends on who you ask.

SO2 + NOx = BAD

Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, says TVA is partly responsible for the yucky brown haze that drapes Huntsville and the rest of the Southeast in the summertime. The utility has spent about $4 billion since the late 1970s on smokestack scrubbers and catalytic reduction systems to cut SO2, NOx and mercury emissions, but Smith said it isn't happening fast enough.

Of the five boilers at Colbert, for example, one uses catalytic reduction to convert nitrogen oxides into harmless nitrogen and water vapor. None have scrubbers to trap sulfur dioxides.

The Knoxville-based Southern Alliance and other clean-air groups have talked about becoming plaintiffs in the North Carolina lawsuit if it goes to court, Smith said Wednesday.

"TVA deserves some credit, but there are still a number of these plants that are not being fully controlled with the best available control technology," he said. "Therefore, folks in North Alabama are breathing dirtier air than they have to."

John Shipp, TVA's vice president of environmental policy and planning, has a much different view. He says air quality across the South-east has "radically improved" in the past 30 years and is getting better all the time.

TVA, Shipp said, spends about $1 million per day on pollution control, including low-sulfur coal that releases fewer sulfates when burned. Widows Creek's busiest coal boilers, Units 7 and 8, both have scrubbers and catalytic reduction systems. Colbert's workhouse boiler, No. 5, is scheduled to get a scrubber by 2010 as part of a systemwide, $2.9 billion emission-reduction program.

Overall, 58 of the 59 boilers that power TVA's electric grid have some type of nitrogen oxide controls.

Could TVA make its planned upgrades sooner? Sure.

But Shipp said the utility would be forced to raise customer rates. That might not sit well with the 8.5 million people in Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina and Virginia who get their electricity from TVA, including everyone in The Times' coverage area.

"We have to strike a balance," Shipp said Wednesday,

"between providing a reliable, affordable supply of electricity and protecting the environment."

Shipp concedes emissions from TVA's Bull Run and Kingston fossil-fuel plants near Knoxville "sometimes" drift toward North Carolina. But he said the common belief that the wind generally blows west-to-east is a myth.

A recent National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration study showed emissions from Bull Run and Kingston are blown to the east only 25 percent of the time, Shipp said.

Summertime blues

The air you are breathing right now is perfectly safe, according to the U.S. Envi-

ronmental Protection

Agency.

Danny Shea, head of Huntsville's Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management, said Madison County for the past few years has been "comfortably below" EPA standards for both ozone and fine-particulate matter, such as soot, sulfates and ammonium nitrates.

The EPA says ozone becomes a concern for humans at 85 parts per billion in the atmosphere. Even in the heat of the summer, when ozone peaks, Huntsville rarely hits that mark. Shea said it happened once this year, on Aug. 18, and not at all in 2003. The highest reading in recent memory: 105 parts per billion in 1998.

While he supports efforts to curb pollution from old, coal-fired power plants such as Colbert and Widows Creek, which broke ground when Harry Truman was president, Shea said automobile exhaust is a much bigger problem for Huntsville.

Colbert, about 80 miles west of the city, and Widows Creek, 60 miles to the east, may affect Madison County's air only when the wind is blowing in this direction, he said.

Smith, the clean-air advocate, said a couple of unusually cool, wet summers in a row have kept North Alabama's ozone levels down. If we get a scorcher next year, he said, ozone readings could shoot into the EPA's unacceptable range.

New boss?

A year from now, all utility companies east of the Mississippi River may have a new boss: the EPA's Clean Air Interstate Rule.

If implemented, utilities would be forced to add scrubbers and nitrogen oxide controls to most coal-fired boilers. TVA, which raised rates by 7.4 percent in October 2003 to pool money for pollution-reduction efforts, estimates the new regulations would cost it $4 billion to $5 billion.

TVA earns about $7.5 billion a year selling electricity.

Rather than retrofit ancient boilers such as Units 1-6 at Widows Creek, Smith said, TVA ought to start fresh with new, cleaner-burning models.

But he isn't going to hold his breath.

"I think TVA will run those plants as long as they can absolutely get away with it," Smith said.

"We're not picking on TVA," he added. "But they're one of the biggest polluters in the country, and until we get cleaner technology, there are going to be these battles."

TVA's Shipp said adding better pollution controls to old boilers makes more economic sense than mothballing equipment that still works. When a car's tires go bald, you don't throw out the car, he said.

You buy a new set of tires.