Request For Hearing Explained

In today's Tribune, there is an article describing the reasoning for the filing of the BER Request For Hearing:

Four conservation groups are again taking aim at invalidating an air-quality permit for the coal-fired Highwood Generating Station in an appeal filed Tuesday with the Board of Environmental Review.

Jenny Harbine, an attorney with Earthjustice, said the plant lacks effective emissions controls to protect the public's health from fine particulate and hazardous pollutants, including mercury. Earthjustice is representing Citizens for Clean Energy, the Sierra Club, the Montana Environmental Information Center and the National Parks Conservation Association in the appeal.

The filing comes a day after Southern Montana Electric and Generation Cooperative, the plant's developer, stopped construction of the plant eight miles east of Great Falls. Work was halted following notification from the state Department of Environmental Quality that the terms of the power plant's air permit didn't allow work to begin until today.

SME broke ground on the site last month.

"SME has brushed aside public health concerns in its rush to construct the Highwood oal plant," Harbine said.

SME CEO Tim Gregori said construction would resume today, with crews pouring concrete.

The group of rural electric cooperatives needs to begin foundation work by Sunday or its air-quality permit becomes invalid. Dan Walsh, a DEQ air compliance supervisor, said the agency would be inspecting the site sometime after Sunday.

"We like to show up at these sites unannounced," he said.

The air-quality permit case will be on the agenda of the Board of Environmental eview on Dec. 5, said Chuck Homer, permitting and compliance manager in the DEQ's Air Resource Management Bureau.

"I'm disappointed they thought they needed to take this back into litigation," SME attorney Ken Reich said of the appeal.

It's the second time the permit has been appealed.

However, National Parks Conservation Association was not involved in the first filing, Harbine said. The group has joined the cause because it is worried about the power plant's footprint on the Lewis and Clark National Historic Landmark, she said.

In the first appeal, filed late last year, the groups asked for better controls for carbon and particulate matter 2.5 microns or smaller, called PM2.5.

The board rejected the carbon argument, but in May it sided with the groups on the PM2.5 issue, ordering SME to look at better controls for the particulate matter.

Harbine said the technology SME came up following the ruling still falls short, leading to the new appeal. The groups also want the DEQ to set a limit for PM2.5 emissions.

"This is DEQ's opportunity to go back and get it right," Harbine said.

"It was a very thorough analysis," Reich said of SME's work on controlling PM2.5 emissions, which involved studying more than 100 types of technologies.

The groups also are asking the DEQ to set emissions limits for hazardous pollutants and to require a maximum achievable control technology review.

In February, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia rejected an Environmental Protection Agency attempt to substitute a cap-and-trade program for a strict emissions-control program. The more stringent program, which was in place under the Clinton administration, requires "maximum achievable control technology" to limit hazardous pollutant emissions from coal-fired power plants.

As a result of the court ruling, coal-fired power plants that emit a combined 25 tons of hazardous pollutants, or 10 tons of any individual pollutant, may have to install additional emission controls.

In its revised air-quality permit application, which the DEQ approved Nov. 10, SME said the additional controls it will use to limit PM2.5 emissions also will reduce the power plant's emissions of hazardous pollutants to 24.4 tons. If the plant can remain below the 25-ton threshold, it would be considered a minor source of hazardous pollutants, meaning it wouldn't be subject to the maximum achievable controls.

"We're seeing this across the country, where power plants are proposing these minimal emissions controls that benefit the plant by allowing it to avoid much more expensive controls of all of its hazardous air pollutants," Harbine said.

Reich said the revised permit is a significant improvement because the power plant could have emitted more than 25 tons of hazardous pollutants under SME's original permit.

"Rather than continue under the current permit, we decided to voluntarily limit our emissions to less than that threshold and we're accomplishing that by a new technology," he said.