Dirty Coal Plants face deadline for installing scrubbers.

[suziedemocrat]

Link: http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=69891

WASHINGTON, July 27 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Even as some of America's dirtiest power plants start to clean up their act, scores of large, old, and inefficient electricity-generating facilities that fail to use available technology continue to pollute the nation's air, according to a report from the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project (EIP.) For example, just 4 percent of the nation's nearly 1,200 fossil-fuel-burning power plants account for 45 percent of their sulfur dioxide emissions. A fully searchable database of the EIP report is available online at http://www.dirtykilowatts.org.

....

A bright spot in the EIP report: After years of delay, sulfur dioxide emissions should start to decline over the next several years, as a significant number of coal-fired power plants install scrubbers to meet deadlines imposed under federal and state clean air rules, or to resolve enforcement actions brought by EPA and states. Almost half (46) of the 100 largest SO2 emitters have either begun construction of a scrubber, or have committed to install one by 2010. Large coal-fired power plants equipped with scrubbers have shown that cleaner power is achievable. For example, Allegheny Energy's Conemaugh plant in Pennsylvania and Harrison plant in West Virginia, and Dominion's Mount Storm plant in West Virginia, all have units equipped with wet limestone scrubbers, and these plants are achieving SO2 emission rates of approximately one pound per megawatt hour (MWh), well below the dirtiest 50 plants' average of 22 pounds per MWh.

[demnan]

1. That is so good

I work next to one, VEPCO, in Old Town Alexandria. The coal trains roll in there on a daily basis. Most of the people in Northern Virginia don't even know why their air is so dirty.