Clean Air Victory!

by Dan Heilig

Citizens in southwest Wyoming can breath a little easier thanks to an order by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency requiring PacifiCorps to conduct continuous opacity monitoring of stack emissions at its Jim Bridger and Naughton power plants. Coal-fired power plants are Wyoming's worst polluters. These two plants alone release nearly 44,000 tons of nitrogen oxides (NOX) and 39,000 tons of sulfur dioxide into Wyoming's air each year.

The order was issued in response to a lawsuit filed by WOC challenging the agency's failure to act on a petition WOC filed with the EPA over two years ago identifying problems with state-issued permits for these facilities. (See the Fall 2000 issue of Frontline.) WOC's petition pointed out that 24 minutes of opacity monitoring during the course of a year was totally inadequate to ensure compliance with the acid-rain requirements of the Clean Air Act.

The EPA's order notes that PacifiCorps never obtained a continuous opacity monitoring exemption from the agency and was not allowed to rely on infrequent visual inspections to show compliance with Clean Air Act requirements. The order directs PacifiCorps to install continuous opacity monitors, rejecting the company's claims that moisture in the plants' stacks prevents accurate monitoring.

According to the trade publication Inside EPA, which had earlier reported on WOC's lawsuit, the order issued by EPA Administrator Carol Browner clarifies "for the first time a Clean Air Act requirement that only the federal government, not states, can approve continuous monitoring exemptions under acid rain control requirements."