When Congress updated the Clean Air Act in 1977, it exempted extant coal-burning power plants from complying with the new air pollution rules. Today many of these aging plants are still going strong, in some cases with almost no modernization; in fact, many of these grandfathered plants significantly increased their electricity production in the 1990s (partly as a result of the nationwide move toward electricity deregulation). In Illinois, twenty-four such plants continue to operate, despite studies demonstrating the extent of their pollution and the resultant threat to public health and the environment.
Clear the Air, a joint project of the Clean Air Task Force, National Environmental Trust, and the U.S. PIRG Education Fund, notes on its Web site that "in terms of volume and variety of contaminants emitted, no other single industry comes close to matching the negative impact from electric power plants. They are the single largest industrial source of some of our worst air pollutants, including sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon dioxide, and mercury. Among power plants, the dirty old coal-fired facilities produce the most pollution." Older coal plants produce up to ten times more sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides than newer ones, and higher amounts of other pollutants as well.
Power plants emit 37 percent of the carbon dioxide, 33 percent of the mercury, 23 percent of the nitrogen oxides, and 67 percent of the sulfur dioxide pollution produced in the United States according to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data. A National Academy of Sciences report from June 2000 said that power plants, especially coal-fired ones, are the country’s single largest source of mercury pollution. The U.S. electric industry is responsible for almost 10 percent of human-made carbon dioxide emissions worldwide, according to a March 2002 study by the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies.
Sulfur dioxide is a leading source of fine particulate pollution (particles smaller than the width of a human hair) that can penetrate deeply into the lungs. Nitrogen oxides are a main ingredient of smog. In addition to causing respiratory problems for children, the elderly, people with asthma, and outdoor workers, smog also reduces crop productivity — annual losses due to ozone for soybeans alone in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio are estimated at $198.6 million to $345.6 million. Both of these pollutants also contribute to acid rain, which may be carried hundreds of miles by wind, damaging forests, corroding buildings, and killing fish in lakes and streams. Mercury can cause severe neurological and developmental injuries to children and wildlife. And carbon dioxide is one of the leading culprits in global warming.
Last year, the Harvard School of Public Health released a study of the health effects of fine particle pollution from nine coal-fired power plants in Illinois (each plant is more than twenty-five years old), including the Crawford and Fisk plants in Chicago. The study found that these power plants are linked annually to an estimated 300 deaths, 13,900 asthma attacks, 2,600 emergency room visits, and 500,000 incidents of upper respiratory disease: "in general, per capita health risks were greater closer to the power plants and decreased with distance. The greatest impacts from current emissions and benefits from potential reductions occur near Chicago and Peoria." About two-thirds of these health impacts could be avoided by requiring these plants to meet modern air pollution emission limits, according to the study.
Chicago Campaign for Clean Power
Since the study was released, a coalition of nearly forty community-based organizations, public health groups, parishes, and community leaders have united to call on the City of Chicago to clean up the Crawford and Fisk coal-fired power plants. Built between 1958 and 1961, their boilers are exempt from the pollution control requirements of the Clean Air Act, and spew out thousands of tons of pollutants into our air every year. These plants are located in the relatively poor, densely populated, mostly Latino neighborhoods of Pilsen and Little Village on Chicago’s southwest side, which bear a disproportionate burden of the public health effects from the plants’ air pollution. According to the Harvard study, these effects include 41 premature deaths, 2,800 asthma attacks, and 550 emergency room visits annually.
The American Lung Association of Metropolitan Chicago has coordinated the campaign to clean up these two plants. As their acting executive director Ron Burke puts it, "We need power to run our homes and businesses, but what good is it without the power to breathe? The whole region is contaminated by air pollution from these outdated plants, but no one suffers more than the people who live next door in Pilsen and Little Village."
Alderman Edward M. Burke (14th Ward) has introduced the Chicago Clean Power Ordinance to the City Council to clean up Crawford and Fisk. Burke’s ordinance would place stricter controls on coal-burning plants, starting in 2006, by further limiting the amounts of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon dioxide, and mercury that the plants can emit. Violators would face stiff fines for noncompliance. A hearing on the ordinance scheduled for late April was postponed, and as of press time, no new hearing date has been set.
When he introduced his ordinance, Burke said that "As locally elected representatives of the people of the City of Chicago, I believe it is our responsibility to step forward and force coal-fired power plants operating in our backyard to adhere to modern pollution control standards." Father Branson Curran of Pilsen’s St. Pius V. Parish says: "Mayor Daley and the City Council should be on the frontline of this issue and set an example for the nation. This is an opportunity for the Mayor to put action behind his vision of making Chicago the‘greenest’ city [in America], and at the same time be responsive to Chicago’s Latino population that suffers the most from the Crawford and Fisk pollution."
Midwest Generation, a subsidiary of Edison International (one of the twenty largest electric power companies in the nation), bought Crawford, Fisk, and four other coal-fired power plants in northern Illinois, from ComEd in 1999. Midwest Generation has promised to meet modern federal air pollution standards for nitrogen oxides, but has so far not been willing to make the same commitment on sulfur dioxide emissions — the main source of sooty particulate pollution. The company has also claimed that tougher pollution emission limits on power plants could create electricity shortages like those in California.
However, according to Howard Learner, executive director of the Environmental Law and Policy Center, "Illinois has enough power supply to reliably meet its electricity needs without running Fisk and Crawford. It’s time for Midwest Generation to clean up its old and dirty coal plants in Chicago neighborhoods and stop harming public health and our environment."
Bush’s Clear Skies Initiative
Bills have been introduced in both houses of Congress that would drastically reduce emissions of all four of the major pollutants from power plants — nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide, and mercury. The Senate bill is the Jeffords-Lieberman Clean Power Act (S. 556); the House bill is the Waxman-Boehlert Clean Smokestacks Act (H.R. 1256). Passing these bills would go a long way toward making U.S. electricity generation less hazardous for people and the planet.
Unfortunately, the Bush administration has also gotten into the act, offering its own misleadingly titled Clear Skies Initiative. Clear Skies does nothing to address carbon dioxide pollution from power plants. That’s no great surprise, considering that Bush has refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, and, bowing to industry pressure, reneged on his campaign promise to clean up carbon dioxide pollution from power plants.
What would Clear Skies do? According to a "white paper" on the U.S. EPA’s Web site comparing Bush’s plan with the Clean Air Act, Clear Skies would "cut air pollution — more, faster, cheaper, and with far greater certainty than current law." It would do that by extending the current "cap and trade" system used in the EPA’s acid rain program to cover not just sulfur dioxide emissions, but also nitrogen oxides and mercury. The government would set caps on how many tons of each of these pollutants could be emitted across the United States; then, it would assign "allowances" to each power plant. Plants that cut their emissions below required levels would be awarded additional allowances, which they could trade to other plants that decided it would be cheaper not to clean up their own emissions. According to documents on the EPA and White House Web sites, Clear Skies would reduce 25 million tons more sulfur dioxide over the next decade than the Clean Air Act, 10 million tons more nitrogen oxides, and 20 tons more mercury (the last over the next six years).
But as a number of environmental groups have pointed out, Clear Skies would actually reduce power plant pollution by a much smaller amount, and much less quickly, than if current Clean Air Act rules were enforced. Analyses of Bush’s Clear Skies plan from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Clear the Air demonstrate, as NRDC puts it, that "Compared to current law, the Bush plan allows three times more toxic mercury emissions, 50 percent more sulfur [dioxide] emissions, and hundreds of thousands more tons of smog-forming nitrogen oxides. The administration plan would delay compliance with even these weak standards by up to a decade longer than would be allowed under current law."
One of the biggest problems with the Clear Skies approach is that while a cap and trade system may work for reducing pollution nationwide, it may not do the same at the local level. If companies decide it’s cheaper to buy allowances from other companies than to reduce their own pollution, they would be free to do so under Clear Skies. Dirty, coal-fired plants like Crawford and Fisk could continue to pollute.
It’s hard to say whether Clear Skies would reduce pollution more than enforcement of the current Clean Air Act and other laws, because the administration has not released data to support their claim that it would. However, a recent story in the New York Times reports that the administration rejected a more stringent alternative to the Clear Skies plan from the EPA. The EPA’s plan would have limited sulfur dioxide emissions to two million tons per year by 2010; the White House plan instead allows three million tons per year, and delays the deadline to 2018. Bradley M. Campbell, commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, said the administration was "overstating the speed and extent of the reductions [under Clear Skies] largely by assuming a baseline that doesn’t include the benefits of the current program, if it were enforced. Whether it’s a matter of intention or effect, [Clear Skies] is a huge gift to the electric generating industry."
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American Lung Association, Chicago