by Wallace McMullen
Kentucky has issued a permit to St. Louis based Peabody Coal to build a large new power plant that is expected to adversely affect the air quality in Mammoth Cave National Park. The proposed facility is called the Thoroughbred Generating Station. The Sierra Club and another environmental organization have filed an appeal of the permitting decision.
Peabody Coal (a.k.a. Peabody Energy) is reported to have plans to build a number of coal-burning power plants in the Midwest. They have announced plans for another such facility in Illinois approximately 50 miles from St. Louis.
If built, Thoroughbred will be a 1500-megawatt coal-fired power plant. (For comparison, the Callaway nuclear plant is a 1100 megawatt plant). It will be constructed near Central City on the Green River in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky. According to information released by Peabody, it would operate as a base load plant and would supply electricity to the Southeastern and Midwestern regions of the country. In other words, it will be merchant plant which will not serve residents nearby.
As this is a St. Louis firm proposing a pollution problem in Kentucky and threatening a National Park, the Sierra Club’s Midwest Regional Conservation Committee intends to support the effort to oppose Thoroughbred. Ozark Chapter members are encouraged to keep an eye on this situation. There will be organizing and planning work undertaken in the next few months to focus efforts on responding to this issue.
Frequent users of Mammoth Cave Park consider the park to already have a serious smog problem. The Thoroughbred plant would only exacerbate this problem. The emissions of mercury will also impact water quality above and below ground in the area.
Documents filed with the permit application indicate the plant would emit approx. 420 lbs per year of mercury (constituting the 4th largest emitter of mercury in Kentucky), 123 lbs/yr of beryllium, 509 tons/yr of volatile organic compounds, 326 tons/yr of sulfuric acid mist, 6,000 tons/yr of nitrogen oxides, and almost 11,000 tons/yr of sulfur dioxide.
An administrative appeal of the Kentucky Division of Air Quality’s (DAQ) issuance of an air quality permit for the proposed Thoroughbred Generating Station has been filed on behalf of the Sierra Club, Valley Watch, Inc., and three individual Mammoth Cave users. Long-time Sierra activist Hank Graddy is the attorney of record.
The challenge to DAQ’s issuance of the permit is based on procedural problems with the agency’s processing and consideration of the permit application and technical problems with the basis of the permit. The latter include an inadequate analysis of impacts on visibility and to vegetation and soils in Mammoth Cave National Park, failure to ensure that best available control technology is used for all emissions, absence of an adequate maximum available control technology analysis, and problems with the emission limit, monitoring, and recordkeeping provisions in the permit. The appeal asks that the permit be revoked.
Thoroughbred also has to go through a number of other permitting hurdles, including a Clean Water Act dredge and fill permit for barge facilities, and the impact on the Green River. This past September, EarthJustice, on behalf of the National Parks Conservation Association, Natural Resources Defense Council, Valley Watch, Kentucky Waterways Alliance, and the Clean Air Task Force, submitted extensive comments on the Army Corps of Engineers’ review of the proposal, including the inadequate analysis of impacts to threatened and endangered species.