Feds Say Proposed WA NOx Control Measures Won’t Cut Haze

TransAlta’s coal-fired plant at Centralia, Washington generates a tenth of the state’s electricity and is also its single largest greenhouse gas emitter. Washington’s Department of Ecology is finalizing a deal to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions at the plant, but the U.S. Forest Service and the National Park Service have said the plan will do little to reduce haze.

The agencies had recommended the use of advanced pollution control technologies to curtail particulate and greenhouse gas emissions. But TransAlta said those newer technologies were too costly, estimating a price tag of $290 million to implement them, and argued that it was capable of meeting air pollution limits with its current technology.

A spokesperson for the company told the Associated Press that $200 million has already been spent on equipment to reduce air pollution from the plant.

The Forest Service sent a letter to the Department of Ecology warning that proposed measures “will do little to improve visibility” in areas stretching from Mount Rainier and Olympic national parks to central Oregon’s Three Sisters Wilderness.

The Park Service’s comments to the Department of Ecology agreed the current plan wouldn’t curtail haze and suggested that TransAlta’s estimates of the cost of the newer technologies were about $63 million too high.

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