FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, January 23, 2022
Contacts: Hannah Lee Flath, hannahlee.flath@sierraclub.org, 860-634-0225
SPRINGFIELD, IL. -- Sierra Club Illinois, Prairie Rivers Network, and the Springfield NAACP are calling on the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA) to hold City Water, Light, and Power (CWLP) accountable to protect Springfield residents and their drinking water. The agency has allowed CWLP to operate without a valid water permit for the last decade, and the public utility's operating permit for the Dallman coal plant expired in 2018. In this time, the Dallman coal plant has been allowed to discharge water pollution from 14 outfalls into Lake Springfield and Sugar Creek for over a decade.
Local residents raised concerns about CWLP’s draft National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit in 2015, but the Agency never finalized the permit and yet still allowed CWLP to continue operating the plant. Ostensibly, CWLP has continued to use the water discharge practices proposed in previous permit drafts that disregard community concerns. Moreover, operations at the plant have changed since 2015, and the draft permit must be updated to reflect the plant’s current operations.
“Outdated permits with lenient pollution standards must become a thing of the past,” says Nick Dodson, ExCom Chair of the Sangamon Valley Group of Sierra Club Illinois. “CWLP has a long history of failing to protect Springfield residents from water pollution and groundwater contamination, whether through outdated water permits, outrageous coal ash closure plans, or negligent enforcement of the Clean Water Act. As a state agency, the IEPA has a responsibility to hold one of our state’s largest polluters accountable and take the public’s concerns about the proposed NPDES permit into account.”
“We’re sick and tired of the same old run around; it’s unacceptable that CWLP is operating on an old permit,” says Teresa Haley, State and Branch President of the NAACP. “It’s time for the IEPA to think of those of us on the East Side of Sprignfield who are most impacted and to bring some transparency and justice to this process. We want a hearing with a virtual option so that everyone can attend and we want an updated permit that protects our groundwater.”
Springfield residents and environmental advocates note that, since the NPDES permit was never finalized in 2015, residents have remained in the dark about the ways in which coal ash pollution has been discharged into drinking water while the permit has been in limbo. The latest NPDES draft permit proposed by the IEPA must be updated to reflect the current operations of the plant and community concerns should be taken into account during a public hearing.
“Thanks to Governor JB Pritzker and the state legislature, Illinois is now a national environmental leader, and yet the IEPA is failing to do its part as a state agency to meet federal Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act requirements,” says Andrew Rehn, Water Resources Engineer with Prairie Rivers Network. “The agency has failed to meet one of its critical responsibilities by never finalizing the NPDES permit and lagging behind on updating its operating permit.”