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Plants agree to ax emissions
Settlement to aid state's court cases against facilities in the Midwest
By ERIN DUGGAN, Capitol bureau
First published: Wednesday, January 12, 2005
ALBANY -- State officials brought the fight for clean air from the Midwest to New York's back yard Tuesday, announcing a landmark agreement with six upstate power plants to remove the equivalent of 2.5 million cars' worth of pollution from their smokestacks.
The six plants, owned by two out-of-state companies, will cut their emissions of nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide by up to 90 percent over the next decade. Gov. George Pataki and Attorney General Eliot Spitzer announced the settlements in a joint news conference.
The settlements, praised by environmental and health advocates, are expected to make it easier for Spitzer to argue in court that companies outside New York need to clean up their operations. Large Midwestern plants are upwind of New York, and have been blamed for much of the state's pollution.
"We initiated those first, and it led, unfortunately, to a response from many of the out-of-state utilities that New York state was trying to clean up its dirty air problem by pushing the issues to out-of-state facilities, rather than focusing within our own house," said Spitzer. "Needless to say, that was not the case."
Spitzer's litigation against power companies began in 1999, when his office targeted several out-of-state utilities for violating the federal Clean Air Act.
Some of the litigation has already been successful, and Spitzer has yet to lose a claim against a power company. The cornerstone of Spitzer's argument is that work done on the power plants is not routine maintenance, which would be allowed without new environmental controls under the Clean Air Act. Instead, the companies are upgrading old, heavy-polluting plants piece by piece to avoid installing emissions-reducing equipment -- a perceived loophole in the law that environmentalists believe the Bush administration would like to open further.
"It's only a loophole if you have an EPA that is intentionally expanding the generally accepted definition of routine maintenance," Spitzer said. "It's our burden now to be rigorous and enforce our definition of routine maintenance, which we have been using successfully over the last five years."
The companies involved in Tuesday's settlements are Minnesota-based NRG Energy, which will clean up two power plants in western New York, and Virginia-based AES Corp., which will clean up four plants in the Finger Lakes and Southern Tier regions of the state. Those four were formerly owned by New York Electric and Gas Corporation, which will pay a $700,000 fine. Niagara Mohawk Power Company, which previously owned NRG's two plants, will pay a $3 million fine and an additional $3 million to support environmental projects in western New York, and is giving the state 2,500 acres along the Salmon River in Oswego County.
"This agreement, by reducing these pollutants by this massive amount, also translates into public health benefits," said state Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Erin Crotty. "It's the grand slam, from an environmental perspective."
NRG will reduce sulfur dioxide emissions by 87 percent, and nitrogen oxide emission by 81 percent at its Huntley and Dunkirk power plants. AES will reduce emissions of nitrogen oxide at its four plants by at least 70 percent, and sulfur dioxide by at least 90 percent.
AES plans to use a new clean-coal technology, and NRG said it's switching from high-sulfur Eastern coal to lower-sulfur Western coal. NRG estimated it will spend $70 million on compliance. No estimate was available from AES.
NRG spokeswoman Meredith Moore said the deal was good for NRG because "it gives us the flexibility we need to achieve the emission reductions without threatening reliability, and it resolves the allegations and litigations we had been subjected to."
The American Lung Association of New York, which monitors New York's pollution-reducing efforts, praised Pataki and Spitzer.
"If you reduce emissions by this level," said spokesman Peter Iwanowicz, "it will mean tens of thousands of fewer asthma attacks, hundreds of lives saved, and hundreds of millions of dollars in health care costs we will no longer have to pay because the air is cleaner."
Duggan can be reached at 454-5091 or by e-mail at eduggan@timesunion.com.
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