... ...Georgia Power, one of the state’s largest contributors to fine-particle pollution, would have to meet its self-imposed deadlines for installing emission controls at its coal-fired plants — or face stiff fines — under new rules up for consideration Wednesday.
The Georgia Department of Natural Resources plans to vote on revisions to the state’s Clean Air Mercury Rule at its Wednesday board meeting.
If approved, the new rules would require the installation of pollution-control equipment at Georgia Power’s Plant Hammond in 2008 and at Plant Bowen by 2010. Officials with the utility company are confident those deadlines will be met.
The revised Mercury Rule — coupled with other federal guidelines aimed at reducing wind-blown particles from out-of-state sources — would help lessen the particle-pollution plaguing Floyd County, said Heather Abrams, chief of the Georgia Environmental Protection Divisi
Construction continues on Plant Hammond’s $256 million scrubber, which is expected to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions by 95 percent. Ken Caruthers / RN-T |
on’s Air Protection Branch.
“With the new (Mercury Rule) in place, we think it is going to be even better than what the EPA maps are showing, based on our preliminary modeling,” Abrams said.
Floyd is one of six North Georgia counties designated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a “nonattainment area” for PM 2.5, the tiny air-borne pollutants that measure 28 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair.
The material is capable of bypassing the body’s natural defense mechanisms and has been linked to decreased lung function, asthma problems, heart attacks and premature death, according to the EPA.
Counties bearing the nonattainment designation also risk losing government funding for transportation projects and face greater difficulty recruiting industries. Floyd received the designation in 2004.
Since then, sulfur dioxide emissions — a byproduct of coal combustion and a major precursor to PM 2.5 — have soared at the region’s largest industrial sources, Georgia Power’s plants Hammond in Floyd County and Bowen in Bartow County.
And the American Lung Association ranked Rome 24th among U.S. metropolitan statistical areas with the worst year-round particle pollution, a list that includes Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta.
June Deen, the association’s vice president of public affairs for the Southeast region, attributed Floyd County’s rising particle-pollution trend to increased electricity output at Georgia Power’s plants.
“If electricity output has increased at Georgia Power, then bad particle days have increased,” Deen said.
The utility company acknowledges electricity generation and sulfur dioxide emissions have picked up at both plants in the last three years. “We have grown so much that we have had to increase output to meet demand,” said Georgia Power spokeswoman Lolita Jackson.
The utility is working to install more than $1.3 billion in pollution-control equipment to cut sulfur dioxide emissions at Hammond and Bowen.
The equipment, however, is not presently in place.
Meanwhile, annual averages for particle pollution in Floyd have exceeded national air quality standards for almost every year since 1999, when the EPD began reporting the material locally.
Pollution rises
The EPD’s pollution monitor sits atop Coosa High School, located three miles east of Plant Hammond and Temple-Inland’s linerboard mill on Alabama Highway.
In 1999, the annual average for particle pollution in Floyd was 22.31 micrograms, or millionths of a gram, per cubic meter of air, according to the EPD. That average exceeded the national air quality standard of 15 parts per million by 48 percent.
Pollution levels in Floyd continued to exceed air quality standards until 2002, when the annual average dropped to 14.6 parts per million.
But annual particle pollution averages have continued to climb since, reaching a five-year high of 16.63 parts per million in 2005, the last year reported by government agencies.
Jimmy Johnston, planning program manager for the EPD Air Protection Branch, said Floyd’s three-year particle pollution average — the agency’s long-term measurement — has exceeded air-quality standards since at least 2002.
The average for 2004-06 was 16.1 parts per million.
“That is one of the highest three-year averages in Georgia,” Johnston said.
Floyd’s pollution problem is not limited to the power plants, he said. Diesel trucks, wood burning and industrial processes contribute, too.
The city’s proximity to Atlanta and Chattanooga — two other metro areas on the EPA’s nonattainment list for particle pollution — doesn’t help either, Johnston said.
Production, emissions soar
Rising particle-pollution levels in Floyd coincide with a three-year spike in electricity generation and sulfur dioxide emissions at plants Hammond and Bowen.
The plants have a total of eight coal-fired boilers with a total heat-generating capacity of 43,900 BTUs, or British Thermal Units, per hour.
Plant Hammond generated 4.3 million megawatt hours of electricity in 2005, a 13 percent increase from 2004. One-megawatt hour is enough to power 1,000 homes for a month.
Bowen cranked out 22.3 million megawatt hours in 2005, a 6 percent increase from the previous year and five times that of Hammond.
Bowen, which has consistently ranked among the busiest and dirtiest plants in America, also led the nation in sulfur dioxide emissions that year.
The plant released more than 186,000 tons of sulfur dioxide in 2005, 20,000 more tons than the previous year.
Curtis Hart, a spokesman for the utility, partially attributed the 2005 emission increases at both plants to a change in the content of coal burned to make electricity.
“Sulfur was up, as well as chlorine” in the coal used at the plants, Hart said. “That is why those emissions went up that year.”
Relief in sight?
Georgia Power is presently installing scrubbers and selective catalytic reduction systems, or SCRs, at Plant Hammond to reduce emissions, said Jackson, the utility’s spokesperson.
The equipment is set for activation next spring.
Similar equipment is expected to be in place at Plant Bowen by 2010, she said.
“Once those come online, they will reduce sulfur-dioxide emissions by 95 percent,” Jackson said.
“Georgia Power has 9,000 employees around the state. We care about the well being of the environment because we live in these communities,” she added. “We are doing all that we can to make sure that the environment is protected.”
The EPD’s Heather Abrams said equipment being installed by Georgia Power is the top of the line and should be able to match the utility’s expectations for cleaning up the air.
But until the air gets cleaner, the health risks for people breathing particle-polluted air in Rome and Floyd County will get only worse, Deen said.
“There is a lot of science being gathered about cancer developing in people who are exposed to high pollution levels,” Deen said. “But there is not much science about long-term exposure.
“We think we are seeing slowed lung function and growth in children and teenagers. And there is damage to the small airways of the lungs.”
