July 24, 2004

Pollution from coal-fired power plants increased more than 16 percent since 1992 and is likely to worsen as utilities competing in deregulated markets increasingly rely on older power plants, a new study says.

More than 159 million Americans live in communities with unhealthy air. Air pollution from power plants alone contributes to an estimated 30,000 premature deaths, hundreds of thousands of asthma attacks, and tens of thousands of hospitalizations for respiratory and cardiovascular illnesses each year. Everyone deserves air that is safe to breathe.

Coal-fired plants in Pennsylvania generated only about 6 percent more electricity than they did seven years ago, but the issue is especially critical to state residents as utilities upwind in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and West Virginia have increased emissions as much as 46 percent.

"I think this is really bad news for states like Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and New York, states that are probably doing a better job transitioning away from coal", said John Coequyt, co-author of the report, "Up In Smoke: Congress’ Failure to Control Emissions from Coal Power Plants".

"There’s no way Pennsylvania is going to be able to stop its clean-air problems without other states stepping up", he said.

The increased reliance by utilities on coal-fired power plants has generated the pollution equivalent of putting another 570,487 cars on the road in Pennsylvania between 1992 and 1998, according to the report produced by the Environmental Working Group and U.S. PIRG. Nationally, 755,000 tons of nitrogen oxide pollution has been produced, or the equivalent of the pollution generated by nearly 37 million cars. Coal produces approximately two times the amount of carbon dioxide as natural gas, and a third more CO2 per unit of heat than oil.

Coal-fired plants produce 56 percent of the nation’s electricity.

The study blames increased use of electricity generated by older, dirtier coal-fired plants with contributing to smog and global warming problems. The problem is likely to grow because the Clean Air Act grandfathered plants planned or constructed before 1977. Utilities use these plants, which are allowed to produce up to 10 times as much pollution as newer facilities, to generate cheaper power.

Deregulation of the utility business has really "exasperated the problem", Coequyt said.

Electricity generated from the same plants grew 2 percent before deregulation and 16 percent after as utilities pushed under-utilized facilities harder, he said. The largest increase was in Illinois, where coal-fired plants generated 46 percent more electricity between 1992 and 1998.

The largest increase in Pennsylvania, which is in its first year of electric deregulation, was at PECO Energy Co. plants in Delaware and Chester counties, which respectively increased generation 51.9 percent and 47.3 percent during the same period.

Source: The Patriot-News, Harrisburg, Pa.

While we were driving home, a light rain began falling, and soon the car was covered with tiny crystal balls of water that skidded over the hood and roof. But then the sun came out, and as we parked at the old homestead the car was dry.

And filthy dirty. Where there had been raindrops there were speckles of dust — as though some giant smoking a super-super Corona had scattered his ashes over our car. We look at one another, thinking it but not saying it: Is this the air we breathe? Yes, even in a city without smokestacks and coal bunkers.

At least one out of every four Americans may be asking that question. We are breathing the air conditioned by thousands, if not millions, of automobiles, the ozone blasters and some jet airplanes. We happen to live right under a major airway that is occupied day and night by smoke-spewing carriers. They leave their signature on pools and patios and white tile roofs. If you watch, you can see the stuff fall.

I don't know why this is tolerated by adult Americans who respect their lungs and bronchial tubes. I don't know why the surgeon general does not hire skywriters to warn: "Your ozone isn't A-OK. Auto and aircraft smoke is dangerous to your health." (The message probably is too long and therefore too expensive.)

It is not, though, a laughing matter. Except in Congress.

For the last decades, both houses have been debating changes in the federal Clean Air Act. Ten years of jawing while we breathe dirty air!

Now, I am aware that the good old U.S.A. has the world's toughest, most expensive and most far-reaching clean-air laws. The annual price tag is put at $32 billion. Maybe so. I am leery, however, of price tags put on our inequities. Add them all up and they usually exceed all the currencies of the world put together. (You know: Crime costs us $1 trillion a year; drug abuse $500 billion; ketchup spills $50 million, etc.)

An agency that, admittedly, seeks the golden mean, warns that the Senate clean air bill may be "ill-conceived, ineffective and catastrophically expensive legislation that could double or even triple America's clean-air costs." True, perhaps.

But we last heard such economic arguments for doing nothing gradually when the auto industry was telling us that air bags would bankrupt the consumer (and itself) and take years to put in place. They are in place now on many models of autos as standard equipment, just as are the once-impossible emission controls. The same goes for those prohibitively expensive stack gas scrubbers for electric utilities. (There are now 149 in operation, without any notable bankruptcies.)                                   

For the last few years, both conservationists and polluters have talked about the greenhouse effect and global warming. Shucks, all this is beyond me. But I remember even more years back when we were being threatened with another Ice Age if we didn't do thus and so.

I always go back to what Jack Kennedy said about "experts" who had misled him. At length he relied on the greatest expertise of all — common sense.

Five major classes of pollutants are discharged into the air: carbon monoxide, particulates, sulfur oxides, hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides. Carbon monoxide is the deadliest, but all are dangerous. We know about gasping for breath in the Los Angeles area but probably little about the death of citrus in the region (auto emissions). In Florida, the air is blighted by the phosphate-fertilizer processing that has killed pines and citrus orchards. Anyone familiar with the Great Lakes area and short-fuse Canadians knows about the scandal of acid rain.

We take another look at the surface (white) of the car and ask, in audible horror this time: "We breathe this stuff?" My gawd, we do — and nobody I know really gets excited about it. What will it take? An angry book? I could write one. But there are already too many. Unheeded.