Friends and foes of the Environmental Protection Agency's proposed plan to reduce haze in national wilderness areas voiced concerns Thursday about the costs involved and the environmental and health concerns associated with coal plants, although an EPA representative said health concerns would not be seriously considered.
Public hearings at the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality headquarters in North Little Rock consisted of dozens of three-minute speeches from representatives of business, environmental, community and liberal-leaning advocacy groups.
Haze occurs when light passes through certain particles that absorb light rather than spread it, including sulfates, nitrates, organic carbon, black carbon and wind-blown soil.
The haze plan targets sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions with the aim of improving visibility in two Arkansas national wilderness areas -- Caney Creek and the Upper Buffalo River -- and two Missouri parks -- the Hercules-Glades Wilderness Area and the Mingo National Wildlife Refuge.
At the morning hearing, several proponents of the plan arrived wearing aqua-colored "I [heart] Clean Air" T-shirts and sat on the opposite side of the room from people dressed in suits, some of whom objected to the plan.
Jordan Tinsley, representing Arkansas Electric Energy Consumers Inc. and Arkansas Gas Consumers Inc., said the plan's estimated cost of more than $1 billion is one-fifth of the state's budget.
"This is either going to require the closure of these power plants or the installation of controls," which are high cost, he said.
To comply with the plan, many have argued that utilities would have to pass down the cost of implementing the emissions-controlling scrubbers to consumers.
Some environmental advocates hope the cost will be prohibitive enough that Entergy and the Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corp. would opt to close the state's largest and highest-emission coal plants.
Glen Hooks of the Sierra Club in Arkansas has urged utilities to invest in renewable energy instead of spending money on immediate fixes to comply with EPA rules.
"I want an energy system that doesn't make us sick or kill us," he said.
Guy Donaldson, chief of air planning with the EPA in Dallas, told Thursday's crowd that many power plants across the country have opted to shut down instead of complying with the regional haze rules.
No one identifying himself as a representative of Entergy, which owns 65 percent of each of the state's two largest coal plants, commented at the hearing Thursday.
Stephen Cain, environmental compliance manager with Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corp., which owns the other 35 percent of the plants, said the cooperative opposed the inclusion of the Independence power plant in Newark and supported an extension of the public comment period longer than 30 days.
Dayana Medina, an environmental scientist with the EPA in Dallas, said she expects the agency to extend its public comment period by at least 30 more days to June 15.
The agency's target date for a final decision on the rule is Dec. 15.
The plan's provisions would go into effect once the plan is adopted.
Business leaders requested extensions of at least 60 days to continue their reviews of the technological requirements before submitting final comments.
The plan implements a component of the federal Clean Air Act regional haze regulations approved by Congress in 1999.
The EPA proposed its Federal Implementation Plan on March 6, after debate at the state level, partial federal disapproval of the state plan and a legal judgment mandating a resolution.
The plan would require retrofitting emissions-reducing scrubbers on nine units at six power plants or an equivalent emissions-reducing measure, and it presents options that may include scrubbers for two units at the Independence power plant, which is not required to be a part of the plan.
But installing scrubbers could cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and business representatives urged the EPA on Thursday not to include the Independence plant in its final plan.
Such scrubbers work to reduce sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions, bearing little impact on the carbon emissions also being targeted by the EPA and environmental groups.
Environmental groups and other proponents of the EPA plan Thursday cited the ancillary health benefits of reducing sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide's presence in the atmosphere, but they noted those chemicals can affect people with respiratory problems.
Donaldson said the EPA would take only visibility into account when developing the final plan.
"The part of the law we're implementing here is regional haze, so that's really what we're going to have to focus on," he said.
Haze is measured in deciviews.
When Caney Creek and the Upper Buffalo River last were measured for haze, they came in at 26.36 deciviews and 26.27 deciviews, respectively.
Although the requirements are being met, the EPA goal is to reduce haze to 11.58 deciviews for Caney Creek and 11.57 deciviews for the Upper Buffalo by 2064 by reducing sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide levels.
Hooks described the visibility issues at the Upper Buffalo River site as simply keeping people from seeing as far or as clearly as they could.
No natural landmarks or formations are blocked by haze, he said.
"It varies depending on the time of year," Hooks said. "But there's definitely a haze issue."
Others disagreed that the cost of the plan would justify the benefit.
"It's patently unreasonable to mandate additional controls at such a high cost to Arkansas energy consumers," said Chad Wood, counsel for the Energy and Environmental Alliance of Arkansas.
"This concern is heightened even more when rules won't result in noticeable change in visibility."
Supporters of the rule hope it will lead to the closure of the White Bluff and Independence coal plants, which would be subjected to the heftiest costs of compliance.
The plants produce 1,700 megawatts of electricity each, a significant portion of the electricity produced in Arkansas.
Those plants, the two largest electricity generators in the state by nearly three times, have operated for more than 30 years each without scrubbers.
They are the only two coal plants in the state without them.
The other plants affected would be Entergy's Lake Catherine plant, two boilers at Domtar's mill in Ashdown, American Electric Power's Flint Creek power plant, and the Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corp.'s Carl E. Bailey and John L. McClellan generation stations.
Kelly Crouch, environmental manager at Domtar, asked that the plan consider the company's transition of some of its paper mill operations into pulp mill operations.
After the morning hearing, the Sierra Club of Arkansas hosted a news conference at the Environmental Quality Department amphitheater.
State Rep. Warwick Sabin, D-Little Rock, spoke to Sierra Club members and supporters.
"When it comes to economic development, it's not just the immediate concerns of business," he said.
"People really care about the environment and atmosphere of the state."
Sabin and many others supported Entergy's announcement Wednesday of an 81-megawatt solar farm near Stuttgart, which would be the state's first renewable energy project.
"It's obviously just the beginning of more renewable energy in Arkansas," Sabin said.
"I really hope we adopt these rules here today."
Metro on 04/17/2015