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Sierra Club sues over coal plant
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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.
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Coal is so 1800’s.
—Damien C. Bordeaux
Damien, Well, what do you propose they use? Natural gas? Ha! Using natural gas for large-scale, utilities (steam, electricity) generation is like using Evian bottled water to flush your toilet. Contrary to the these allegations, the UW plant does a pretty good at filtering the emissions from coal burning. The reason activists on this campus make a big fuss is that the facility is highly visible and looks a little shaggy from the outside. But their standards are actually quite high. Do a little research at the DNR for yourself.
Natural gas is as clean as hydrocarbon fuels will come, and its supply is limited. It should be conserved for small-scale applications and future needs.
The coal power plant should be replaced with a pebble bed nuclear power plant!
Save the coal, so it can be converted into synthetic gasoline - by pebble bed nuclear power plants.
The UW’s plant lacks scrubbers for either sulfur dioxide or nitrogen oxides. It also spews mercury pollution with abandon. Modern pollution controls (scrubbers) can reduce each of these pollutants by upwards of 90 percent. In addition to harming our residents (particularly asthmatics and kids), coal mining is destroying communities throughout Appalachia. The UW should be looking at biomass blended w/natural gas — this would eliminate all mercury and sulfur emissions.
“coal mining is destroying communities throughout Appalachia”
Would it be sooooooo much better if all the coal miners were out of jobs?
10:41am— Check your facts. 1) They do have the scrubbers for SO and NO, but they aren’t state-of-the-art magnesium ones. 2) The UW gets its coal from Wyoming and Colorado, not Appalachia. 2) Biomass ain’t self-sustainable. and burning it releases lots of nasties as well. Just because people label it “bio” doesn’t mean it’s automatically good.
Re nuclear: illegal in Wisconsin.
Re natural gas: of course UW can use it at Charter. It already uses it at the cogen plant on campus.
Re pollution controls: nope. There are no scrubbers for SO2 or NOx on any of the UW’s plants. No scrubbers, no catalytic reduction, no carbon injection, nada. Check it out yourself— http://www.dnr.state.wi.us/org/aw/air/permits/113008390-P10.zip
Re pollution standards: not actually “quite high.” In fact, quite low.