Sierra Club sues over coal plant

by Sean Sullivan

Friday, May 4, 2007 00:00

An environmental watchdog group filed a lawsuit Thursday against the University of Wisconsin, citing violations of pollution standards with the campus' coal plant.

The Sierra Club held a press conference outside the Charter Street coal plant to explain its evidence, saying UW failed to adhere to the Clean Air Act.

David Bender, the lawyer representing the Sierra Club, said the Charter Street plant has recently spent millions of dollars upgrading its parts, but has failed to install the necessary pollution controls against the harmful emission of mercury and sulfur dioxide.

"As the complaint alleges, the Charter Street plant made modifications but never installed the modification pollution controls and never informed the Department of Natural Resources," Bender said.

Bruce Nilles, the Midwest representative for the Sierra Club, said the Charter Street coal plant is one of the three largest sources of global warming in Dane County.

Nilles cited other problems in Madison arising from burning coal without modern pollution controls.

"You can't eat the fish out of the lakes of Madison because of mercury contamination. The largest source of mercury contamination in Dane County [is] coal-burning power plants," Nilles said. "We are very close to violating air quality standards for smog pollution."

Citing a certified letter sent to UW in December, Nilles said the Sierra Club has tried to work with UW over the issue of the Charter Street coal plant, but he said the university has not cooperated.

"Today's lawsuit comes at the end of about a year-long process of trying to engage the university in a dialogue to step forward and do something voluntarily," Nilles said. "We first met with the administration informally and said, 'How do we work together to fix this problem?' The university ignored us."

Modern pollution controls are readily available, according to Nilles, and the Charter Street coal plant could cut some of the emissions by 90 percent if it complied with the federal Clean Air Act.

UW spokesperson Dennis Chaptman said in an e-mail to The Badger Herald that the university believes the coal plant is operating under government regulations.

"Our lawyers have not yet had a chance to analyze the claims made by the Sierra Club in its lawsuit," Chaptman wrote. "To the best of our knowledge, however, we have operated the plant in accordance with all applicable legal requirements."

Nilles said at a bare minimum, UW should modify the plant, but he favors rebuilding the entire coal plant.

The Charter Street coal plant provides the east campus with steam for heating and, according to Nilles, would take between four and five years to rebuild.

"We have been trying to get the university to live up to its reputation as being a world-class research institution that has some of the leading researchers on global warming, but when it comes to its own backyard, the university has failed to live up to its promise," Nilles added.