Texas Coal Plants An Issue, Sierra Club Says

Two coal-fired power plants in Texas stand as the most immediate threat to air quality in Northwest Arkansas, said the director of the Sierra Club in Arkansas.

The plants are among seven at issue in a Jan. 15 public hearing in Oklahoma City. The federal Environmental Protection Agency called the hearing after rejecting parts of Texas' plan to gradually reduce the amount of haze-causing sulfur dioxide from the plants.

Glen Hooks, this state's Sierra Club director, said his group will argue at the hearing the sulfur dioxide contributes to haze as far north as Benton and Washington counties and over the federally protected headwaters of the Buffalo National River.

"We'll be trying to organize an effort to bring people from Northwest Arkansas and from Little Rock," Hooks said. Wildlife refuges in other parts of the state are also affected, he said.

"It's a slightly different issue than public health. It's a visibility issue," Hooks said of sulfur dioxide. "But if you address the visibility issue, that's obviously going to have positive health effects. You're cleaning up the air."

The major impact of the Texas plants' sulfur dioxide is over the Big Bend National Park and the Guadalupe Mountains National Park in west Texas, plus the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge in southern Oklahoma, said a spokesman for the regional office of the federal agency in Dallas.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality said in a Dec. 18 statement it will argue the effect on visibility within the "Upper Buffalo Wilderness site" is not significant enough for any agency of the federal government to be concerned. The statement came in response to Hooks' remarks.

The two power plants, Hooks said, are in the far northeastern corner of Texas and are owned by Luminant Energy, the largest power generating company in that state. The plants are in Mount Pleasant and nearby Tatum. Mount Pleasant is about 56 miles in straight-line distance from the state line in Texarkana.

Those two are among seven power plants that the EPA says emit too much haze-causing sulphur dioxide, which makes up only one part per billion in the atmosphere in nature. Sulphur dioxide is defined as a pollutant with health consequences and was a target for reduction in the EPA's efforts in recent years to reduce acid rain, according to news accounts.

However, the Texas case is solely concerned with the haze issue.

The Monticello plant in Mount Pleasant began generating power in 1974 and burns lignite coal. The unit in Tatum began generating in 1977 and also burns lignite. Lignite, which is sometimes called brown coal, is one of the lowest grades of coal used in power production in the United States. It produces more ash and other unwanted byproducts than higher grades of coal. Both the Mount Pleasant and Tatum units are located near lignite mines in Texas.

The Texas commission disputes the federal agency's Nov. 24 ruling that the haze-reducing plan it submitted was not aggressive enough. The commission calculated it would achieve "reasonable, natural clarity" at protected areas affected by haze between 2081 and 2155.

Critics replied that 141 years is too long to wait for clean air. The equipment the federal agency wants installed would cost more than $2 billion for the seven plants, the state agency argued. The EPA favors a plan that would eliminate about 230,000 tons of released sulfur dioxide a year.

Energy Future Holdings of Dallas, Luminant's parent company, filed for bankruptcy earlier this year, according to news reports. The holding company filed for Chapter 11 protection in Delaware over $40 billion in debt amassed during a 2007 leveraged buyout, the Dallas Morning News reported.

The haze is a federal concern because the EPA has the authority to regulate haze when it impairs visibility in areas such as national parks, wildlife preserves and other federally protected resources, such as the Buffalo National River.

"If you go to a national park to take in the views, it's kind of nice to be able to see them," Hooks said.

The Flint Creek power generation plant in Gentry provides most of the electricity in this corner of the state and it is not under federal scrutiny for haze, Hooks said. Past efforts by the plant controlled haze, the agency has found. Besides investment in anti-haze equipment at the plant, Flint Creek uses higher-grade coal brought by rail from out of state.

The Sierra Club unsuccessfully argued in a 2013 rate hearing that the Flint Creek plant should convert to natural gas from coal to meet new EPA air quality guidelines for emissions other than haze-causing ones. The state Public Service Commission instead approved the plant operator's plan to control emissions of all kinds by investment of $408 million.