Laws Undermine ‘Environmental Justice’ | News, Sports, Jobs

Thirty years ago, more than 800 piles of coal waste marred the Pennsylvania landscape, poisoning streams and emitting gaseous odors, including the rotten-egg odor of hydrogen sulfide.

Then, as part of a statewide cleanup, power plants capable of burning low-grade coal began converting the waste into electricity. Indeed, some piles of waste continue to smolder from spontaneous combustion, polluting the air long after mining has ceased.

However, coal-fired power plants have reclaimed more than 7,200 acres and 1,200 miles of streams. Once-barren landscapes and polluted streams are teeming with wildlife because of ongoing reclamation.

Unfortunately, the new rules threaten to upend one of Pennsylvania’s greatest comeback stories. Since 2013, five waste coal plants have closed due to regulatory or economic pressures.

“The plants still have at least 20 years of work left” says Jaret Gibbons, executive director of the Appalachian Region Independent Power Producers Association (ARIPPA). “However, both state and federal governments have proposed emission limits that would likely prohibit further operations. Proven technologies that would meet the regulations do not exist, and if they did exist, they would likely be prohibitively expensive.”

Indiana County is home to Seward Generation, a 525-megawatt coal-fired waste-to-energy plant. Capable of generating enough electricity for 650,000 homes, the Seward plant has removed more than 50 million tons of coal waste over its 20 years of operation.

But Jim Panaro, executive vice president of Robindale Energy, says Seward and two other plants his company operates could be even more efficient in a more favorable regulatory environment.

Although the company only removes material from the surface, it spends two to three years obtaining the same mining permits required for operators who dig hundreds of feet underground. State regulators often exceed the 180-day deadline for permit approval, Panaro said.

In addition, regulations sometimes add unnecessary costs. The company spent $2 million to reduce the aluminum content of water discharged through Seward below the concentration in the river that receives it.

“The water leaving the plant is cleaner than the water it takes from the Conemaugh River” says Panaro, who also fishes for trout in nearby streams.

Attempts to link Seward’s issue with “regional fog” in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley and New Jersey’s Brigantine Wilderness are absurd to plant managers, who note the lack of evidence. In addition, the proposed solution—installing a $600 million flue gas desulfurization scrubber—would force the Seward plant to close.

A few years ago, former Gov. Tom Wolf’s proposal for a carbon tax would have limited Seward to operating at 65 percent capacity, slowing environmental cleanup and threatening much of the state’s economy. The Robindale plants support 400 jobs and spend more than $245 million a year in wages, operating costs and taxes. The future under Gov. Josh Shapiro’s recent carbon tax proposal is unclear.

Onerous regulations pose challenges for plants burning waste from a 5-million-gallon pile in Swoyersville, Luzerne County. Hank Zielinski, vice president of Northampton Fuel Supply, says the growing federal requirements are burdening companies with paperwork and additional expenses.

“Sometimes we have to write long plans that simply repeat words from the agency’s policies” says Zielinski.

Despite regulatory hurdles, these plants in Pennsylvania and one in West Virginia process an average of 6 million tons of coal waste per year. Left alone, the waste would eventually emit millions of tons of sulfur dioxide and methane, and smaller amounts of hydrogen sulfide and mercury, according to ARIPPA. Partly because they burn the greenhouse gas methane along with the coal, the plants claim a net annual reduction of 29 tons of the gases that supposedly warm the atmosphere.

The most obvious benefit, however, is the remediation of land and waterways.

“The value of reclaimed land has increased dramatically” says Bobby Hughes, executive director of the Eastern PA Coalition for Abandoned Mine Reclamation. The former landfill sites have been transformed into residential and commercial areas, sports fields, meadows and wooded areas. The Wilkes-Barre Area School District educational complex occupies one. Swoyersville will take over several reclaimed acres for community use.

“By repairing the harms of the past, we deliver environmental justice to communities that are already underserved” says Panaro, whose company removes waste from former mining towns that have been designated by state regulators as “areas of environmental justice.”

Waste coal-fired power plants are also a cost-effective solution to environmental remediation.

“Alternative methods for cleaning up Pennsylvania’s waste piles are estimated to cost as much as $16 billion” says Gibbons of ARIPPA.

While remediation costs make power plant electricity more expensive than other sources, the efficiency of the cleanup and the 2,000 jobs it supports are significant benefits. The estimated value of the environmental benefits and avoided cleanup costs is $300 million per year, according to one study cited by ARIPPA.

If policy makers really support “environmental justice” Coal-fired waste power plants seem like a good idea for conservation.

Gordon Tomb is a senior fellow at the Commonwealth Foundation, a Pennsylvania-based free-market think tank.