TVA adding scrubbers to reduce pollution

TVA adding scrubbers to reduce pollution

Four coal plants will get the cleaning units

BY DAVE FLESSNER
BUSINESS EDITOR

The Tennessee Valley Authority announced Thursday it will install scrubbers at four more of its biggest coal-fired power plants as part of a $5 billion effort to clean up its dirtiest plants.

"This equipment, combined with our other pollution-control efforts, will take us beyond the current environmental requirements and will help make the air cleaner in the Valley," said John Shipp, TVA's general manager of environmental policy and planning.

TVA plans to spend $1.5 billion to add two scrubbers at its Kingston coal plant near Knoxville and three single scrubber units at its nearby Bull Run plant and at its Colbert plant in Alabama and its Paradise plant in Kentucky. The new equipment will remove sulfur emissions generated by the burning of coal used to make electricity.

Collectively, the five scrubbers are projected to reduce TVA's annual sulfur dioxide emissions by at least 200,000 tons a year.

Environmentalists and lawmakers praised TVA's announcement, although some said such equipment should have been installed already.

"These targeted reductions will go a long way on what we know is still a long journey," said Don Barger, Southeast regional director of the National Parks Conservation Association. "This commitment by TVA will begin to lift the huge burden of pollution on the parks."

Sulfur and nitrogen oxides released from the burning of coal at TVA plants help produce smog and acid rain, which have made the Great Smoky Mountain National Park the most polluted national park in the country, Mr. Barger said.

The plants selected for scrubbers don't match those the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency cited two years ago when it sued TVA to bring its oldest coal plants up to new source standards. Mr. Shipp said TVA continues to challenge the EPA order, which has been set aside temporarily. The units chosen for scrubbers were those that could help TVA realize the biggest environmental gain for its money, Mr. Shipp said.

The federal utility has already spent $2 billion on pollution controls at its 11 coal plants and is spending another $1 billion by 2005 to install selective catalytic reduction units to remove nitrogen oxides from the fossil units.

The next five scrubbers will be added after TVA completes installation of its reduction units.

By the time all of the planned equipment is in place just before 2010, TVA expects to have reduced sulfur dioxide emissions 85 percent and nitrogen oxide pollutants by 75 percent since 1977.

TVA currently emits nearly 700,000 tons of sulfur dioxide a year and is using emission credits banked in earlier years to exceed the cap set by federal and state regulators. The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, a Knoxville environmental group, estimates that the new scrubbers will bring TVA's sulfur dioxide emissions to nearly 20 percent below current federal standards.

"With the commitment of $1.5 billion to build the scrubbers, TVA is clearly putting the health of Tennessee Valley residents above their bottom line," said U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Chattanooga.

But environmental groups were in Washington, D.C., Thursday urging Congress to develop even stricter air pollution standards. U.S. Sen. James Jeffords, chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has proposed a measure to require a 75 percent reduction in air emissions beyond the requirements that became effective last year.

"We applaud this important step and voluntary commitment to cleaning TVA's plants, but we recognize the continued need for federal legislation, such as the Jeffords bill," said Ulla Reeves, regional air coordinator for the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.

TVA once planned to phase out some of its coal plants, which average more than 40 years in use. But officials said they now generate more than half of all TVA power.