The state of Wisconsin announced Tuesday they paid $251,000
to the Sierra Club as part of a settlement that forced the state to reduce coal
usage at a University of Wisconsin power plant.

UW and the state reached an agreement with the Sierra Club
last November after the organization filed a lawsuit claiming the UW-operated
Charter Street coal plant violated federal clean air regulations. District
Court Judge John Shabaz ruled the plant failed to install proper pollution
controls during several renovations.

As part of the agreement, coal usage at the plant had to be
reduced by 15 percent by January this year, and the state had to pay the legal
fees of the organization.

According to Sierra Club representative Bruce Nilles, the
money was paid by the state “several weeks ago,” and the amount was
the result of negotiations between the two parties. He added the organization
requested less than the amount it spent on the case, however.

“The defendant we are dealing with is the state, so we
wanted to be mindful of that,” Nilles said. “At the end of the day,
it’s the taxpayers who are going to have to pay for it. A fair amount of our
expenses we did not claim, that we would have claimed if we had been dealing
with a defendant who was a privately owned company.”

Nilles said 80 percent of the money received by the Sierra
Club paid for its outside council Garvey, McNeil and McGillivray of Madison. He
said the rest paid for things like travel costs for depositions, copy fees and
experts’ pay.

In addition to the $251,000 the state has paid to the Sierra
Club, Wisconsin Department of Administration Administrator for the Division of
State Facilities David Helbach said in February the state has also appropriated
$1.2 million to “look at options to not only meet the lawsuit”
requirements but to go beyond them to find the best options to improve the coal
plant operations.

“We had identified problems at Charter Street … but
the lawsuit brought it to a head that something has to be done,” Helbach
said.

The Charter Street plant heats and cools buildings on the UW
campus, making it unlikely the plant will be shut down, according to Helbach.
He added UW needs to select an option to replace coal as the sole means of
power by July in order to comply with another stipulation of the agreement.