Sierra Club Wins Decision by Environmental Protection Agency to Address the Nation’s Largest SO2 Polluter

AUSTIN, TX - Today, the Sierra Club learned that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is requiring the State of Texas to finally submit a plan to address the sulfur pollution from Vistra Energy’s Martin Lake Power Plant in Rusk County, Texas. Martin Lake is the largest source of sulfur dioxide (SO2) pollution in the country, which significantly impacts communities living near by and downwind of the coal plant, including large metro areas like Dallas and even significantly impacts air quality in our National Parks.

This decision by EPA comes after Sierra Club’s April 27, 2020 lawsuit against EPA for failing to require Texas to submit a plan to reduce this excessive and unsafe air pollution impacting communities around the coal-burning Martin Lake power plant in Rusk and Panola Counties in northeast Texas. The state’s own air pollution monitor shows that levels of harmful sulfur dioxide (SO2) pollution around Martin Lake violate EPA public health standards.

EPA’s decision also directs Texas to submit plans for two other SO2 nonattainment areas created by Vistra’s Monticello and Big Brown Power Plants, both of which are now closed, but require an official plan to ensure the pollution is addressed permanently.  While Vistra closed these two plants in 2018, Martin Lake’s 2019 SO2 emissions nearly doubled compared to 2016, the year EPA finalized the non-attainment area intended to reduce SO2 pollution. As determined by EPA, Martin Lake’s sulfur pollution creates an area deemed to be in “nonattainment” or out of compliance with the public health standard for SO2. 

Sulfur dioxide pollution can harm people in multiple ways, as it will also interact with other pollution in the air to form dangerous particulate matter pollution. A public health analysis conducted in 2017 by Dr. George Thurston demonstrated that this pollution from Martin Lake, by itself, contributes to more than 100 premature deaths annually, thousands of asthma attacks, lost work, lost school days, and more than $1 billion in public health costs every year. Emerging research in the midst of the COVID19 pandemic confirms the deadly impact of particulate air pollution, linking chronic exposure to air pollution to higher death rates for those contracting COVID19. 

Chrissy Mann, Campaign Representative for Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign in Texas released the following statement: 

“We are celebrating this decision by the EPA but this action is long overdue. The public health standard for sulfur pollution was finalized in 2010, and EPA made the determination that Martin Lake is out of compliance with that standard made final in 2017.  As EPA concedes, Texas should have submitted a plan to address this pollution over two years ago in July 2018. These delays are not merely paperwork- these are delays that forced communities to breathe dangerous sulfur pollution for years and years. We are calling on the State of Texas to take EPA’s decision seriously and stop siding with polluters and quickly require the worst coal polluter in the country to clean up its act."