Working to protect public lands and wildlife since 1967


Coal-Fired Power Plants

The Jim Bridger Power Plant

The Jim Bridger Power Plant is Wyoming’s largest coal-fired power plant, located about 25 miles east of Rock Springs. This plant emits significant quantities of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, particulate matter, carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas linked to global warming), mercury, and other pollutants.

In 2007, the Wyoming Outdoor Council and the Sierra Club filed a “citizens suit” under the Clean Air Act against PacifiCorp, the operator of the plant and wholly-owned subsidiary of MidAmerica Energy Holding Company, for alleged violations of its air quality permit.

As shown by PacifiCorp’s own monitoring reports, the company exceeded the opacity limits allowed by its permits. Opacity is the degree to which the transmittance of light is reduced by air pollutants—an overall measure or indication of the density of pollution being emitted by a plant.

In August 2010, PacifiCorp agreed to pay a $1 million penalty, as part of a settlement of the lawsuit, for its repeated air pollution violations over the course of five years at the plant.

The million-dollar cash penalty was paid to the U.S. Treasury, and was the largest ever levied in Wyoming's history against a single facility for air pollution violations.

The settlement will also required PacifiCorp to obtain a new air quality permit to regulate future emissions from the Jim Bridger plant.

“We're pleased, especially for Wyoming residents, that this plant is being held accountable,” the Wyoming Outdoor Council's Bruce Pendery said of the decision. “We need to do the best job possible of protecting the public health in Wyoming, and at this power plant the company was falling short.”

The Wyoming Outdoor Council believes that improved oversight of industrial pollution in Wyoming can help ensure better protections for residents.

“In the end, compliance with our environmental laws is critical to the public’s health," Pendery said. "We look forward to working with the Department of Environmental Quality and the Environmental Protection Agency to ensure our pollution control laws are adhered to. Pollution laws exist to protect people, and they must be enforced.”

After the conservation groups sued PacifiCorp in 2007, the opacity violations at Jim Bridger dropped significantly.

“Although PacifiCorp may try to claim that our case had nothing to do with the reduction in violations, this is no mere coincidence,” said Reed Zars, the attorney who represented the Wyoming Outdoor Council in this case. “Our action shows that laws are not enough--they need to be enforced or the word gets out that it’s open season on Wyoming’s environment.”

 

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