Three Permits to Pollute, THREE Chances to Make Our Voices Heard

October 19, 2020

Photos by Cade Kistler, Mobile Baykeeper, flight provided by Southwings.

Photos by Cade Kistler, Mobile Baykeeper, flight provided by Southwings.

What: Public comment period for 3 proposed permits for Plant Barry near Mobile, Alabama.

Where and When: email from the convenience of your home by October 22, 5:00 p.m.

Directions are in this notice and below. Be sure your voice is included in the public record and inform the outcome!

NOTE: Oral comments were also taken at a public hearing that was on October 15, 2020. Written comments received prior to the close of the public comment period will be considered and entered into the public hearing record and will be given the same consideration as those provided at the hearing. 

The Background

  • The Alabama Department of Environmental Management (ADEM) will accept written comments from the public on 3 proposed permits for the James M. Barry Electric Generating Plant (Plant Barry) near Mobile. 

  • Plant Barry is a large fossil fuel power plant where both coal and gas are burned.

  • Thanks to Sierra Club’s litigation, ADEM is finally reviewing the permits to -- hopefully -- bring them in line with pollution reduction requirements. Now is our chance to comment! 

    • Air Permit: The Clean Air Act Operating Permit (sometimes called a Title V permit)

    • Water Permit: The National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Permit 

    • New Gas Plant Permit: Air Permits for Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD)

  • Plant Barry’s air and water permits were issued a decade ago, and they are now long overdue for renewal. This has enabled Alabama Power to delay compliance with critical pollution control requirements, involving updates to outdated technology. This means Alabama Power has been operating under outdated, expired permits, permits that allow it to continue operations using obsolete pollution control technology and emitting excess amounts of air and water pollution that should be reduced under new permits. 

  • Comments from the public are crucial to highlight the community’s concerns regarding permits that are weak and allow Alabama Power to pollute in violation of legal requirements. 

    • We need to demand that the new permits comply with legal requirements imposing strict limits on dangerous emissions. 

    • The company should install state-of-the-art pollution controls to ensure maximum protection of the air and water. 

    • ADEM must include adequate testing, monitoring, reporting, and record keeping requirements so it is clear when the plant is violating its permits.

The Air Permit: Key Facts and Issues

What is an air permit?

  • Barry is considered a “major source” of air pollution, which must operate under an up-to-date Clean Air Act permit that includes all legal requirements for its air emissions. 

  • The EPA is required by the Clean Air Act to set a health based standard to protect the public from the harmful effects of exposure to sulphur dioxide, also known as SO2

  • Of the 2 coal fired units, only one unit has a scrubber to control sulphur dioxide (SO2) emissions.

What is Sulphur Dioxide?

  • Sulphur dioxide is a toxic gas that is emitted at the Barry Plant. 

  • According to the EPA, exposure to SO2  for even as little as 5 minutes can reduce lung function and aggravate asthma and make you dangerously sick.

What is wrong with Barry’s SO2 Emissions, and draft air permit?  

  • Barry’s SO2 emissions are significant, and under proposed permit allowances, those emissions easily could exceed the levels necessary to protect human health. 

  • This pollution disproportionately impacts low-income folks, rural communities, and people of color. It’s unethical to force these people to bear the impacts of Plant Barry’s pollution. 

  • The permits are too weak on proper testing, monitoring, and recordkeeping to ensure we are kept safe from toxic emissions, which means the permits can’t be enforced, and the company can’t be held accountable if it breaks the law.

What should change about the proposed Barry air permit?

  • The permit limits need to be more stringent to prevent toxic emissions that harm public health.

  • ADEM should revise the permit to ensure it complies with federal law. Notably, the current proposed limit allows Barry to emit almost four times the federal limit of SO2 allowed by the Clean Air Act.

  • Coal dust control must be improved. As written, the draft permit would not adequately control the tiny particles of coal dust that damage human health and the environment.

  • The permit should consider that certain communities will be disproportionately impacted by pollution.

Where can I comment?

The Water Permit: Key Facts and Issues 

What is a water permit? 

  • Power plants must be legally permitted to operate under the Clean Water Act’s National Pollutant Elimination System (NPDES), including meeting special effluent limitation guidelines for power plants (sometimes called “toxic wastewater rules” or “ELG Rules”). 

  • These regulations are designed to protect the water we drink, rivers where we fish and boat and swim, and Alabama’s remarkable wildlife.

What is wrong with Barry’s water pollution controls? 

  • Huge fish kills. The Barry Plant, for over half a century, has exploited the Mobile River for its water needs, damaging the ecosystem of the river and surrounding areas. Alabama Power’s own studies identify that Plant Barry has annually sucked nearly half a million fish into its cooling system, over 350 million larval fish, and nearly a quarter-million non-fish marine life organisms. 

  • Toxic water pollution. Wastewater discharged at Plant Barry (into an area already saturated with mercury) contains a dangerous brew of arsenic, mercury, selenium, and nitrates. Even in small concentrations, these heavy metals can be lethal to humans and animals. Folks who fish on the Mobile River shouldn’t have to wonder if their catch is full of dangerous poison.

  • The Mobile-Tensaw Delta is “America’s Amazon.” Its biological diversity is globally significant and must be protected.

  • Four of the six units at Plant Barry rely on dated (60+ year old) cooling systems that cause heated water discharges into the Mobile River, harming fish and other aquatic life.  


What is wrong with Barry’s proposed water permit?

  • ADEM’s proposed permit does not force Plant Barry to comply with the legal requirements that protect the public and the environment, allowing Alabama Power to continue destroying Mobile River ecosystems. 

  • Alabama Power wants to delay complying with toxic wastewater rules until the end of 2023 (or later) - which means at least 3 more years of poisoning our waters, despite being fully capable of complying earlier. 

  • The draft permit would allow Barry to discharge heated water with a daily maximum discharge temperature of 112°F, which is lethal to many fish species in the Mobile River. In fact, 112°F is only an average temperature, which means the temperature could be even higher. 

What should change about the proposed Barry water permit?

  • The permits need to demand immediate compliance with legal regulations. There is no good reason that Alabama Power should get to avoid complying with pollution laws for 3 or more years.

  • The heated water discharge limit must be stricter and intake technology must be brought up to date. The technology already exists. Plant Barry needs a “closed cycle” system for dealing with thermal pollution emissions, which would prevent fish and aquatic life kills. 

Where can I comment?

The New Fracked Gas Permits: Key Facts and Issues 

What is a new fracked gas permit?

  • Alabama Power has proposed to more than double the existing power output of Plant Barry. This massive expansion consists of two large electric generators that would primarily burn fracked gas, known as Barry units 8 and 9.

  • Alabama Power’s proposed gas expansion requires permits under the Clean Air Act known as “prevention of significant deterioration” (PSD) permits. This type of permit is meant to protect air quality in the immediate area where polluting activities are being added. 

  • Ultimately, if ADEM decides to grant these PSD permits, it must condition them on Alabama Power building its gas expansion with the “best available control technology” for pollution. 


What is wrong with Barry’s proposed fracked gas permits?

  • Most of these proposed permits are simply premature: ADEM proposes to permit Alabama Power to build its gas expansion over the next decade, over a series of four projects on the timeline in the table below. 

  • PSD permits are not supposed to be issued for speculative projects to be built over a long time period precisely because the “best available control technology” improves over time. 

  • The EPA warns us that a PSD permit is not a “pre-approved check to cash in any time” for projects that are actually “independent from a physical, operational, or economic standpoint.”  

  • For nearby communities the stakes are especially high -- Alabama Power admits that its proposed gas expansion would lead to significant increases in air pollution (like sulphur dioxide and carbon dioxide) that harms public health, the environment, and causes property damage.

 

Activity

Unit 8

Unit 9

Start of Construction

March 2021

March 2023 

Commercial Operation

November 2023

November 2025

Turbine Upgrade

August 2027 

August 2029

 

What should change about the proposed fracked gas permits?

  • ADEM should not grant permits to build and “upgrade” Barry Unit 9. Nor should it grant a permit to “upgrade” Barry Unit 8. 

  • Doing so would allow Alabama Power to evade the technology improvements that it would otherwise be required to adopt, to protect the health of those living, working, and recreating near Plant Barry.

  • ADEM should revise its “best control available technology” analysis for Barry Unit 8 and address several related permit conditions to minimize the additional air pollution from this unit in accordance with the law.

Where can I comment?

How do I get involved?

  • ADEM and Alabama Power were content to let Plant Barry operate with expired permits. We pushed ADEM to issue new proposed permits, and now it’s time to make our voices heard before they are finalized. Together, we can push ADEM to impose stricter, legally necessary, limits on Alabama Power’s permits to pollute.

  • Written comments should be submitted to the mailing or email address(es) listed below

  • Commenters should identify the appropriate permit number(s) on the first page of their comments, please clearly identify which permit matches which comment: 

  • AIR PERMIT: Number 503-1001 - The Clean Air Act Title V Major Source Operating Permit

Ronald W. Gore, Chief
ADEM-Air Division
1400 Coliseum Blvd.
[Mailing address: PO Box 301463; Zip 36130-1463]
Montgomery, AL 36110-2400
(334) 271-7861
airmail@adem.alabama.gov

OR CLICK HERE!

 

Jeffery W. Kitchens, Chief
ADEM-Water Division
1400 Coliseum Blvd.
[Mailing address: PO Box 301463; Zip 36130-1463]
Montgomery, Alabama 36110-2400
(334) 271-7823
water-permits@adem.alabama.gov

OR CLICK HERE!

 

Ronald W. Gore, Chief
ADEM-Air Division
1400 Coliseum Blvd.
[Mailing address: PO Box 301463; Zip 36130-1463]
Montgomery, AL 36110-2400
(334) 271-7861
airmail@adem.alabama.gov

OR CLICK HERE!