Sierra Club Sues Over Texas Power Plant

The Sierra Club, represented by Earthjustice and Environmental Integrity Project, filed a lawsuit last Thursday against the owner of a Texas power plant that the group says has had more than 50,000 air pollution violations.

The massive Martin Lake coal-fired power plant, located near Longview, Texas, is owned by Luminant (formerly TXU). It is one of the dirtiest coal plants in the nation and the worst power plant for mercury pollution among all U.S. coal plants with 1,764 pounds of mercury emissions in 2008, as listed on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Toxics Release Inventory.

In Texas, Martin Lake ranked third for soot pollution and was responsible for 13% of all industrial air pollution in the state.

Earthjustice says the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has ignored years of repeated excessive soot pollution and other violations at the Martin Lake plant, putting the health of nearby communities at risk. While this legal challenge alleges over 50,000 violations for
the last 5 years, TCEQ has not issued one enforcement notice, nor
corrected any of the deficiencies at the plant through that same time
period.

The lawsuit is based largely on company self-reported emissions data that indicates that the coal-fired power plant is emitting far more fine particle pollution than it should. Fine particles from power plants have been linked to asthma attacks, lung ailments, and thousands of premature deaths a year.

Like all coal-fired power plants, Martin Lake emits air pollution in enormous volumes each year, especially soot particles, mercury, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide. These chemicals combine in the air to create dangerous levels of ozone, acid rain and smog that worsen asthma and other respiratory diseases. Carbon dioxide causes global warming.

"Luminant’s Martin Lake coal plant is consistently among the dirtiest in the entire nation and one of the worst polluting coal plants in Texas every year," stated Neil Carman, Clean Air Program Director for the Sierra Club’s Lone Star Chapter. "Martin Lake has the highest total air pollution (168,000 tons) among more than 2,000 industrial plants statewide. In fact, Martin Lake accounted for 13% of all industrial air pollution in Texas in 2008 and 20% of all coal plant pollution. That’s a huge amount of pollution from this one source."

Pollution from the Martin Lake power plant and its smokestack plumes can drift for hundreds of miles over communities in East and North Texas and all the way into Oklahoma, putting the health of the several million Texans and Oklahomans who live downwind at risk. Martin Lake’s emissions make it particularly problematic for areas to achieve minimum air quality standards. It particularly contributes to the Dallas-Ft. Worth area’s air quality problems and federal ‘non-attainment’ status.

Non-attainment refers to a region’s inability to meet minimum public health safeguards for amounts of pollution in the ambient air surrounding citizens. Non-attainment affects the region’s eligibility for federal funding.

"The egregious amount of air pollution from Luminant’s Martin Lake coal plant is highly dangerous for the health of people living in Rusk and surrounding counties,” said Ken Kramer, Director of the Sierra Club’s Lone Star Chapter. “Martin Lake’s massive plumes of smog-forming nitrogen oxides are also one of the reasons the Dallas-Fort Worth area experiences high ozone levels and does not meet the Clean Air Act’s standards for human health. The pollution from Martin Lake also drifts across state lines into Oklahoma and Arkansas.”

Ilan Levin, senior attorney with the Environmental Integrity Project said: "This coal-fired power plant is consistently in the top 10 highest carbon dioxide emitters in the nation, the top 50 highest sulfur dioxide emitters in the nation, and is shamefully ranked number one as the highest power plant mercury polluter in the U.S. There is no “safe” level of exposure to fine particles according to EPA–in other words, emissions from this Luminant power plant will continue to damage the environment and the public’s health regardless of whether the surrounding area meets federal air quality standards. Our goal is to stop illegal air pollution through strict enforcement of the law."

In August, Environmental Integrity Project and Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) filed a motion to intervene in the lawsuit brought by Attorney General Greg Abbott and the State of Texas against the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regarding the EPA’s June 2010 disapproval of a portion of Texas’ air permitting program.