New federal air standards proposed for mercury

Tougher new federal air standards proposed for toxins like mercury would provide huge benefits in Illinois, according to a new report from the Environmental Law and Policy Center.

It says those benefits range from healthier kids and lower healthcare costs for businesses, to being able to eat fish from local streams, rivers and lakes.

The feds held hearings on the proposed new standards last month, and are expected to finalize them over the next few months. Howard Learner of the Environmental Law and Policy Center says in Illinois, protecting children's health needs to be a priority.

"It's time for both industrial boilers and for coal plants to clean up, reduce the amount of mercury pollution that's going into the environment and lead to safer water in the Great Lakes, in our rivers and streams, and protect kids' health," Learner said.

Learner says Illinois made progress in reducing mercury pollution after a 2006 agreement required coal plants in the state to install mercury controls. But he adds the federal standards would be the first to reduce mercury from industrial facilities as well as coal plants.

Some members of Congress have vowed to fight the proposed rules, saying they will hurt business and cost jobs.

Jennifer Fuller, WSIU

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Doe Run, Missouri DNR reach agreement on lead cleanup

PARK HILLS, MO (KRCU) - Doe Run and the Missouri Department of Natural Resources reached an agreement with the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up lead contamination in a popular state park and an adjacent floodplain.

Nearly 15% of St. Joe State Park near Park Hills is slated for cleanup. It is Missouri’s third largest state park.

St. Joe Minerals Corporation donated the park to Missouri DNR in 1976. The land was mined for lead between 1923 and 1972. St. Joe Mineral Corporation changed its name to Doe Run Resources Corporation in 1994.

According to an EPA press release, elevated levels of lead are present in the Shaw Branch of Flat River. Heightened lead has been found in sediment, surface water, and aquatic life.

Total cleanup will cost approximately $7 million and 18 months. Most of the costs will be covered by the bankruptcy settlement of American Smelting and Refining Company in 2009. A $7.7 million special account was specifically designed for St. Joe State Park, according to the EPA.

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EPA proposes new power plant air standards

ST. LOUIS, MO (ST. LOUIS PUBLIC RADIO) - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has proposed the first-ever national standards for air pollution from power plants.

The new rules would require many power plants to install technologies to control mercury, arsenic and other toxic air pollutants.

Environment Missouri’s Ted Mathys says the new standards would help protect the health of Missourians.

“We know that because Missouri has a significant amount of mercury pollution from our coal fired power plants that these regulations will help protect Missouri’s families and our wildlife from the dangerous effects of mercury pollution,” Mathys said.

Ameren Missouri says installing new pollution controls could cost hundreds of millions of dollars — costs the company says could be passed on to customers.

Ameren’s Vice President of Environmental Services, Mike Menne, says installing the required pollution controls could cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars and increase rates to consumers.

“This particular rule will require controls on every coal-fired power plant we have. We’re going to be attempting to control things that we’ve never tried to in the past,” Menne said.

Véronique LaCapra, St. Louis Public Radio

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Crowds gather to discuss Callaway nuclear power plant

JEFFERSON CITY (MISSOURI DIGITAL NEWS) - Testifiers on a plan for a second nuclear plant for Callaway County gathered outside two Senate hearing rooms Wednesday a hour before a hearing on the issue even began, causing blockage of a hallway that continued even after Senate doormen allowed some of the crowd to enter the rooms.

The crowd, consisting of both supporters and dissenters of the plan, were forced to accumulate on nearby benches and watch the proceedings on a TV provided for them in the hallway. Each person in the crowd came to provide their opinions on an attempt by the state's main utility provider, Ameren Missouri, to put the cost of building the plant on its ratepayers.

In order to build the plant, Ameren needs to acquire a early site permit from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which would allow the utility company to hire outside researchers to analyze environmental, geological and safety aspects of the proposed building site. Sponsor of the bill, Sen. Mike Kehoe, R-Jefferson City, said the bill is a compromise between Ameren, supporting energy providers and state lawmakers to ensure the site permit moves forward, while ratepayers are still protected from suffering a major tax-increase.

"After multiple meetings, I came up with [the bill], which is laid out to be a compromise, but I want to be clear, it is not an agreement to the letter from either side." Kehoe said. "No one on either side of this equation was 100 percent happy with it but it represents, me, as a common sense guy, saying I recognize what needs to be done and the need for consumer protection, and I thought that was fair."

Warner Baxter, CEO of Ameren Missouri, said the ratepayers would be charged an additional two dollars for the average resident and two-tenths of one percent for the larger industrial users. Baxter called the charge a low cost for building and promoted the potential benefits a site permit and nuclear plant could bring.

"[A site permit] gives us the opportunity to access federal incentives, which can save our customers money," Baxter said. "Certainly there is no doubt that a nuclear plant could present a great economic development opportunity by creating thousand of clean energy jobs and hundreds, if not more, permanent jobs in the future."

To protect the ratepayers, Kehoe said his bill provides certain instructions about how much Ameren can charge as well as procedures for ratepayer rebates if for some reason Ameren does not use the site permit to build a nuclear plant:

• The proposal places a "hard cap" on the amount of money Ameren can recover from its customers to pay for the site permit. According to the proposal, Ameren cannot collect more then $40 to $45 million from its ratepayers.
  
  
• Ameren can only conduct the additional rate for a period of 20 years. Once this period has concluded, Ameren can no longer collect fees from the ratepayers to help pay for the site permit. Ameren estimates, however, hold that at two dollars per resident per year, the company should be able to allot enough money to reach the $40 to $45 million cap.
  
  
• If the site is not built, the bill requires Ameren to give back the money it collected. Should the bill pass, if for some reason Ameren does not receive the site permit from the NRC, decides to sell it or does not build the plant, the utility provider would need to present a rebate to the ratepayers that equals the amount the company received from the consumers, including interest. Ameren would need to present the credit to ratepayers in a five to ten year period.

Opponents to the bill, such as members from the Missouri Coalition for the Environment, said making consumers pay for the plant's construction went along with the Construction Work in Progress proposal, which allows utilities to charge ratepayers for the payment of new power plants during construction. Ed Smith, the No-CWIP representative with the Coalition, stated that the proposed legislation should not pass since voters shot down similar legislation two years ago and that Ameren needed CWIP to build the second Callaway reactor.

"Without CWIP, Ameren would not be able to finance a second nuclear reactor and Ameren needs CWIP because the free market gave up on nuclear power decades ago," Smith said. "While construction of a second nuclear reactor is sure to create jobs in Missouri, no state has ever improved its economic well-being by going with the more expensive option."

Smith also said that Missourians should not be left to "pick up the tab on a 50-50 gamble" that he said Ameren has already spent millions of dollars on pursuing.

Matthew Patane, Missouri Digital News

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Speaker stresses sustainability in outdoor recreation

CAPE GIRARDEAU, MO (KRCU) - If you are going to enjoy the outdoors, do so within respect.

That’s the message that conservation educator J.D. Tanner delivered Wednesday at the Missouri Department of Conservation’s Nature Center.

Tanner’s lecture covered the importance of environmental sustainability in outdoor recreation, and the impact that we have on our environment.

Tanner gave some eye opening facts about the impact that we have on the environment. He stated that a main concern facing our world is our society’s tendency to over-consume unnecessary things like plastic water bottles, and the unwillingness to recycle such objects.

"We now go and we buy water bottles, an item that is intended to be discarded immediately but we build it to last forever. So we go out, we buy and we buy, and things don’t make it back to recycling areas. We recycle 5% of plastic bottles, the whole world does," Tanner said.

J.D. Tanner is an influential advocate for environmental sustainability. He continues to inform people of our responsibility to protect the world we live in by teaching classes on such topics at San Juan Community College in Farmington, New Mexico.

According to Tanner, the best answer to getting people to act more responsibly in our environment is through education.

Daniel Rohr, KRCU

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Fine particles of coal ash may be used in concrete

A professor at Missouri University S&T is looking to pave the way to stronger concrete while simultaneously keeping fly ash out of landfills.

Fly ash is the smallest particle found in coal ash. It is a byproduct of coal-burning power plants and has been used in concrete since the construction of Hoover Dam. But Dr. Jeffery Volz is developing a formula that will double the amount of fly ash used in concrete.

Although this will decrease carbon dioxide in the air, there is concern for heavy metals leaching out of the concrete into the water supply.

“When we put it in concrete, the chemistry is actually altered and if there are any trace elements, heavy metals, mercury, things like that they are all bound into the concrete. They don’t leach out of the concrete so it’s even better than putting it in a landfill plus we’re using a waste product which is going to cut down on cost which is going to cut down cost to Missouri residents,” Volz said.

Volz says adding fly ash to concrete would decrease the amount of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere. For every one pound of cement produced, one pound of carbon dioxide is also released.

“The roads we drive on, the buildings we live in, the bridges we drive over, the dams that hold back the water, the distribution systems for getting us water; all built out of concrete so it’s very much a staple in our civilization and if we can find a way to make it greener then it’s just going to make it that much better,” Volz said.

Volz is still developing the best formula and type of fly ash to use in concrete. The Missouri Department of Transportation has expressed an interest in using the newly developed recipe.

Katie Long, KRCU

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Coal ash landfill controversy continues in Franklin County

LABADIE, MO (ST. LOUIS PUBLIC RADIO) - In the small Franklin County town of Labadie, Missouri, about 35 miles west of St. Louis, a debate is raging over what to do with millions of tons of coal ash.

The dispute is pitting area residents against the utility company Ameren – and putting Franklin County’s commissioners in the middle of the fight.

It all started with the Labadie ladies book club.

“Well, we don’t really have a name,” says long-time Franklin County resident Kay Genovese.

It was the summer of 2009. “Everybody was just gathering, and somebody kind of off-handedly said, oh, did you all hear that so-and-so just sold his bottom ground. And nobody had heard about that, and she said, yeah, I heard he sold it to Ameren.”

Bottom ground – that’s land in the floodplain of the Missouri River. Genovese says at book club the next month, they found out another farmer had sold his land.

“And we were like, oh, to Ameren again?” Genovese said. “Three months in a row, we kept hearing about these different farmers selling their ground to Ameren.”

The book club ladies started asking questions. They found out that Ameren was planning to build a 400-acre coal ash landfill in the floodplain, next door to its massive power plant in Labadie.

Ameren’s Labadie Power Plant

Shift supervisor Jim Dean says with its four huge turbines, Labadie can generate enough power to supply electricity to almost half a million homes. To do it, the place burns coal by the train load.

“Each train has about 130 cars in it,” Dean said. “Each car holds 100 tons of coal. And we’ll burn one car, 100 tons of coal, in about four minutes with all four units at full load.”

At two coal trains a day, that works out to about 10 million tons of coal a year. Approximately seven percent of that – over half a million tons – is left over as coal ash.

Ameren recycles more than half of it.

The rest gets mixed with water, and sluiced out to two open ponds next to the plant. The coal ash settles out to the bottom, and the remaining water gets discharged, untreated, into the Missouri River.

Running Out of Room

But Ameren’s Vice President of Environmental Services, Mike Menne, says those ponds are running out of room. At 400 acres, the new landfill would be big enough to replace them both and take ash from Ameren’s Meramec and Rush Island plants, too.

Menne says the new landfill would have protection systems the current ponds lack. It would be double-lined to protect groundwater and have a berm around it — about as high as a two-story building — to keep floodwaters out.

“And then it has what’s referred to as a leachate collection system which is a water collection system,” Menne added. “Any water that would percolate through the material is collected and sent back to the plant to be used for process water.”

Local Impact

Even with all the new safety precautions, many area residents are worried about all that ash and what’s in it: toxic elements like arsenic, chromium, and lead, which can cause cancer, developmental problems, and other serious health issues.

They’re afraid those hazardous substances could wind up in groundwater or the Missouri River and contaminate area drinking water supplies. They’re also concerned about property values and increased truck traffic.

Remember those Labadie book club ladies, who first found out about Ameren’s landfill plans? Well, they got organized, and gave themselves a name: the Labadie Environmental Organization now has close to 400 members.

One of them is Franklin County resident Petra Haynes. She hopes Ameren will — as she puts it — “do the right thing” and not build a landfill in the floodplain.

“We really firmly believe that there has to be a better, safer location,” Haynes said. “We would like Ameren to really consider the safety and well-being of their customers, rather than the bottom line.”

“We Have to Put It Somewhere”

Haynes and other area residents have been voicing their concerns at public hearings with the Franklin County board of commissioners. The board is trying to decide whether to change county zoning regulations to allow utility waste landfills like Ameren’s.

Presiding Commissioner John Griesheimer says he understands why people don’t want a landfill in the floodplain.

“But the bottom line is we have to put it somewhere,” Griesheimer said. “To be opposed to it and have an alternative is one thing, but to be just opposed to it without giving us another option here, that’s another matter, and that’s what’s hard for everybody to do.”

Griesheimer says a final decision on the county’s landfill regulations is still months away.

Véronique LaCapra, St. Louis Public Radio

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Ameren's coal-fired plants are a major source of mercury pollution

A new report released today by Environment Missouri suggests coal-fired power plants in Illinois and Missouri are among the largest sources of mercury pollution in the country.


Mercury can cause serious health problems for both wildlife and people who eat contaminated fish.


State advocate for Environment Missouri, Ted Mathys, says four out of five of the top mercury-emitting plants in Missouri belong to Ameren.


"The Ameren Labadie power plant alone emitted 1,297 pounds, ranking it first among Missouri’s plants, and 15th among all 451 power plants analyzed nationally," Mathys says.


In a written statement, Ameren Missouri said it has been "studying mercury control methods" in anticipation of new federal rules.


Véronique LaCapra, St. Louis Public Radio

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Missouri Land Reclamation Commission grants one hearing, denies the other

The Missouri Land Reclamation Commission made a decision Monday regarding formal hearings for two quarry companies, Strack Excavating and Heartland Materials, who are trying to obtain permits to put quarries in Fruitland.

The Commission granted a formal hearing regarding the permit proposal for Strack Excavating but denied a hearing for the Heartland Materials proposal.

Heartland Materials will now be able to move forward and obtain a mining permit from the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. Strack Excavating will now have to go through a formal hearing which will mean more in-depth testimony from both Strack and the people of Fruitland.

The decision to grant a hearing for the Strack Excavating quarry proposal came as a response to concerns about proximity to Saxony Lutheran High School and the lack of a buffering zone along the property line of the high school.

The hearing officer can also take into account the company's two notices of violation and two letters of warning that the company has received in the last 10 years. These violations include emissions violations and a failure to submit paperwork.

The hearing will take place in front of an independent hearing officer appointed by Missouri's Administrative Hearing Commission.

Katie Long, KRCU

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Coalition asking EPA for more time to evaluate cleanup options for Carter Carburetor Superfund Site

ST. LOUIS, MO (KWMU) - A coalition of St. Louis City residents is asking the Environmental Protection Agency for more time to evaluate cleanup options for the Carter Carburetor Superfund Site on the city's north side.

The former gasoline and diesel carburetor manufacturing plant once owned by ACF Industries has dangerous levels of several toxic contaminants, including PCBs and asbestos.

Environmental justice advocate Romona Taylor Williams says she and other north side residents have asked EPA to provide an independent contractor to help them interpret the more than 600 page technical report about the site.

"The independent contractor would provide the community with the scientific technical assistance that we need in order to evaluate, and to empower ourselves with the proper information to effectively comment," Taylor Williams says.

According to an EPA statement, agency representatives met with area residents earlier this week and intend to provide more information in response to their questions.

Monday is the official deadline for the public to comment on the report, but EPA said it will continue to accept input after that date.

Véronique LaCapra, St. Louis Public Radio

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