Regional Air Quality Program Manager

April 11, 2005

Mike Ewall ActionPA 1434 Elbridge St. Philadelphia, PA 19149 215-743-4884 [email protected] Mark A. Wayner Regional Air Quality Program Manager Department of Environmental Protection Southwest Region--Field Operation 400 Waterfront Drive Pittsburgh, PA 15222-4745

RE: Plan Approval No. PA-30-00150A for the Greene Energy Resource Recovery Project proposed by Wellington Development--WVDT, LLC for Cumberland Township, Greene County, Pennsylvania

ActionPA opposes the permitting of the Greene Energy Resource Recovery Project (hereinafter, “GERRP”) for a broad range of reasons.

Many substantive reasons for rejection of this plan approval application have been submitted by Dr. James Kotcon and by Nancy F. Parks. We request that their comments be incorporated by reference in our own comments. Our additional comments are as follows.

Unjustified political bias favoring project must be removed from the permitting process.

The political decision to support waste coal burning as a remediation method for waste coal piles is unscientific and unjustified. DEP’s political support rests on assumptions about the safety of waste coal ash disposal on unlined “placement” sites (ash dumps). These assumptions are not supported by the data in DEP’s own files, which show considerable evidence of leaching and groundwater damage. Replacing every 100 tons of waste coal with 60 to 80 tons of highly toxic, concentrated ash cannot be viewed as a benefit, especially when evidence has shown that even the claimed benefits of alkaline ash neutralizing acid drainage have been proven false. Considerable data on this (sourced largely from DEP’s own files) has been compiled by the Clean Air Task Force (www.catf.us).

Legally-speaking, the air emissions permitting of a waste coal burning power plant cannot be based on any supposed benefits of waste coal pile management. By the same token, any harms (including the undocumented emissions) from waste coal piles cannot be used to offset emissions from the proposed power plant.

Mercury content of fuel

Bituminous waste coal (gob) in Pennsylvania has the nation’s highest concentration of mercury. Based on 1,753 samples in EPA’s 1999 Information Collection Request (ICR), Pennsylvania gob has an average concentration of 0.69 ppm, 3.5 times higher than the average of 0.20 ppm found in the 13,468 bituminous coal samples from Pennsylvania. It’s also substantially higher than the concentration of mercury found in West Virginia gob (0.46 ppm, the second highest concentration in the U.S.). This EPA data is available online in charts and via links to the raw data files at: http://www.energyjustice.net/coal/wastecoal/epa-icrdata.html

GERRP plans to burn 2,666,830 tons per year, with 85% of that fuel being gob and 15% run-of-mine coal. Using EPA’s mercury concentration figures (which are generously lower than the 1 ppm figure assumed by ENSR’s supporting documentation in the permit application), this amounts to 3,288 pounds per year of mercury entering the facility in the fuel each year. All of that mercury will leave the power plant in the form of ash and air pollution. The proposed mercury air emission limit of 9.32 lb/yr assumes that 99.72% of the mercury entering the power plant will be captured and will exit the facility in the ash, rather than through the smoke stack exhaust. Using ENSR’s 1 ppm figure for waste coal mercury concentration, the air emission limit assumes a 99.80% removal efficiency. This is far higher than the 90% removal efficiency figure that ENSR claims they used in the GERRP permit application.

In a collective 185 years of operation of waste coal burning power plants in Pennsylvania, only two state tests for mercury have been taken. These are outlined in the waste coal industry’s flagship report published by EarthTech in 2000, titled "Occurrence and Fate of Selected Trace Elements in Circulating Fluidized Bed Combustion Products" (p110). They show removal efficiencies of 99.80% and 99.82% for Scrubgrass (gob) and NEPCO (culm) power plants, respectively. Waste coal mercury levels are variable and these tests represent snapshots of the actual, ongoing mercury emissions from waste coal power plants. One would be naïve to expect that these two data points are representative of the entire industry’s average emissions, as stack tests are often done under the most optimal conditions that don’t represent actual operations, including start-up, shut- down and upset conditions.

We are concerned that the 9.32 lb/yr limit may be unrealistic.

The mercury emissions for GERRP must be continuously monitored and the limit must be aggressively enforced.

Pennsylvania is already so overexposed to mercury pollution that any additional mercury air pollution should be viewed as unacceptable. The following facts underscore our point:

 Pennsylvania already ranks number one for releases of mercury pollution from coal and oil fired power plants.  The highest level of mercury measured in the rain in the U.S. and Canada was in 2001 in Cambria County, PA (home to three waste coal burning power plants). On average, Pennsylvania ranked third- highest for mercury contamination among the 13 states studied between 1997 and 2002.  Pennsylvania is one of 19 states with a statewide fish consumption advisory due to mercury contamination. Pennsylvania is one of only 3 states where the general population is asked to restrict their consumption of all types of fish from any body of water in the state.

Documentation of each of these points can be found on our website at http://www.actionpa.org/energy/

Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs)

Burning coal or waste coal in circulating fluidized bed (CFB) burners releases more polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) than conventional pulverized coal burners do. PAHs are a group of over 100 different chemicals that are formed as byproducts of combustion.

PAHs have a range of toxicity. Most PAHs are known to cause cancer in animals and are suspected to cause cancer, birth defects and a wide variety of other health problems in humans.

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon pollution is greater from fluidized bed combustors. Factors that increase PAH formation in coal burners include: limestone injection, lower combustion temperature range, and burning low- rank coal. All of these factors describe waste coal burners. Two additional factors apply to bituminous waste coal burners: higher levels of sulfur and chlorine in the fuel. [See references 1-5 below.]

A study of PAHs emissions from fluidized bed combustors show that more PAHs end up in the air emissions than in the ash, contributing to health problems for downwind communities.[See reference 5 below.]

Efforts must be made to continuously monitor and to reduce PAH air emissions. Greene County already suffers from an excessive rate of cancer and significant new, known sources can not be justified.

[1] Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) emissions from a coal-fired pilot FBC system Journal of Hazardous Materials, Volume 84, Issues 2-3, 29 June 2001, Pages 175-188 Kunlei Liu, Wenjun Han, Wei-Ping Pan and John T. Riley

[2] Toxic organic emissions from coal combustion A. M. Mastral Corresponding Author Contact Information, E-mail The Corresponding Author, M. S. Calln and T. Garcia Department of Energy and Environment, Instituto de Carboqumica, CSIC, PO Box 589, 50080 Zaragoza, Spain Fuel Processing Technology Volume 67, Issue 1 , June 2000, Pages 1-10

[3] Ecotoxicological Assessment of Ashes and Particulate Matter from Fluidized Bed Combustion of Coal Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety, Volume 41, Issue 1, September 1998, Pages 59-61 M. Callen, E. Maranon, A. Mastral, R. Murillo, P. Salgado and H. Sastre

[4] Kunlei Liu, Rebecca Heltsley*, Daozhong Zou*, Wei-Ping Pan, and John T. Riley, "Polyaromatic Hydrocarbon Emissions in Fly Ashes from an Atmospheric Fluidized Bed Combustor Using Thermal Extraction Coupled with GC/TOF-MS," Energy & Fuels, 2002, 16(2), 330-337.

[5] Assessment of PAH emissions as a function of coal combustion variables Fuel, Volume 75, Issue 13, October 1996, Pages 1533-1536 Ana Mara Mastral, Marisol Calln and Ramn Murillo

Dioxins / Furans

Pennsylvania bituminous waste coal has 13% higher chlorine content (average 1,200 ppm) than Pennsylvania bituminous coal (average 1,058 ppm). It also has higher concentrations of many trace metals. Chlorine content and the presence of metal catalysts are major factors in dioxin formation. Most of this formation tends to be on the ash, as the ash particles cool down in a process known as de novo synthesis. This has been documented in a dozen research papers on the topic, which are all references online at: http://www.ejnet.org/dioxin/catalysts.html

Efforts must be made to reduce the period of time in which the exhaust gases and ash pass through the relatively low temperature range at which dioxins are formed – around 200oC (392oF) to 400oC (752oF). This may require a quench system be installed.

Continuous Emissions Monitors (CEMs)

The proposed plan approval only required yearly testing for many of the air pollutants that would be emitted from GERRP. Annual tests are not very representative of ongoing emissions and are often performed under optimal conditions.

Continuous Emissions Monitors (CEMs) now exist for many of the pollutants for which only annual testing is proposed.

Mercury CEMs now exist and would be required for the proposed Longview pulverized coal power plant in Morgantown, WV and the Beech Hollow waste coal power plant in Robinson Township, PA. Mercury CEMs ought to be required for GERRP as well. Two CEMs for ammonia have also completed verification testing by the Advanced Monitoring Systems (AMS) laboratory, run jointly by EPA and Battelle. This is mentioned in the March/April issue of The Monitor, which also stated that “[t]he ammonia CEMs also provide process control benefits that reduce production costs at the power plant.” See the issue online at: http://www.epa.gov/etv/pdfs/newletters/monitor/01_mon_apr04.pdf

Six of the seven metals that the plan approval application requires to be tested annually can be tested continuously using CEMs. Cooper Environmental Services produces a multi-metal CEM that can test for nine metals (antimony, arsenic, barium, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury, nickel, and zinc) using X-Ray technology. This technology went through verification testing in 2002 and was written up in the September 2002 issue of The Monitor (see http://www.epa.gov/etv/pdfs/newletters/monitor/01_mon_sept02.pdf). The company now has CEMs capable of covering an even wider range of pollutants. See: http://www.cooperenvironmental.com/cem.html and http://www.cooperenvironmental.com/xact.html

Dioxin CEMs are also under development (see June 2004 issue of The Monitor at http://www.epa.gov/etv/pdfs/newletters/monitor/01_mon_june04.pdf). Until these true dioxin CEMs are available, continuous testing can be achieved with the use of monitors with longer sampling periods. In September 2001, EMC Environment Engineering Ltd. announced the “World's First Continuous Dioxin & Furan Sampling System” – offering a dioxin/furan emissions sampling device with a sampling period up to 30 days (see http://www.cank.org.uk/AMESA.html). This makes it possible to take 12 samples per year, collecting a complete picture of actual dioxin emissions. This AMESA technology is available from Casella Eti at http://www.emc-environment.com/Products/Detail.asp?ID=49. To date, no dioxin testing has occurred at any waste coal CFB facilities and Toxic Release Inventory emissions reporting has been a matter of guess work. This is inexcusable now that viable continuous testing technology is available.

Casella ETi also makes available CEMs for hydrofluoric and hydrochloric acids, VOCs and PAHs. These are all pollutants with serious consequences that ought to be monitoring on a real-time basis. These products can be found on Casella’s website here: http://www.emc-environment.com/Products/Default.asp

Finally, CEM monitors for ambient for fine particulate matter have been tested in 2001 and are discussed in the September/October 2001 issue of The Monitor (see ttp://www.epa.gov/etv/pdfs/newletters/monitor/01_mon_septoct01.pdf). Some of the vendors involved may also have CEMs appropriate for point sources. This ought to be investigated and if such monitors are available, they should be required so that compliance with particulate matter emissions limits can be accurately assessed.

All CEM data ought to be made available real-time on a publicly-available Internet website, as a condition of the permit.

Fine Particulate Matter (PM2.5)

The new PM2.5 regulations should be applied to GERRP. Gerrymandering of non-attainment designations should not prevent DEP from applying common sense to the situation. Normally, counties are designated as attainment or non-attainment. In Greene County, Monongahela Township, immediately to the south of the host municipality (Cumberland Township) was designated as non-attainment. The main pollution source likely to be causing the non-attainment (the Hatfield’s Ferry coal power plant) is located in Cumberland Township, where GERRP would be located. It would be absurd to pretend that PM2.5 emissions from GERRP won’t add to the emissions from the two other power plants in the immediate vicinity, aggravating the non-attainment problem in the area. Pollution doesn’t neatly stop at the Cumberland or Monongahela Township borders. At a minimum, the PM10 regulations should be applied, as EPA has stated in their April 6, 2005 NSR memo titled “Impelementation of New Source Review Requirments in PM-2.5 Nonattainment Areas,” where they state: “Accordingly, until we promulgate the PM-2.5 major NSR regulations, States should use a PM- 10 nonattainment major NSR program as a surrogate to address the requirements of nonattainment major NSR for the PM-2.5 NAAQS.”

(Memo is available online at http://www.epa.gov/pmdesignations/documents/nsrmemo.pdf)

SO2 Allowances

EPA’s new clean air interstate rule (CAIR) rejects a request by Pennsylvania DEP and industry for eased sulfur dioxide (SO2) on waste coal burning power plants. DEP must cease this anti-environmental behavior and must require that GERRP and other waste coal burners pay in full to purchase SO2 credits to offset their emissions.

Global Warming Pollution (N2O)

CFB boilers – due to temperature issues – convert a lot of the nitrogen emissions to N2O, rather than NOx. N2O is a potent greenhouse gas and when you convert the potency to CO2-equivalents, it shows that CFB burners release 15% more greenhouse gas emissions than normal coal burners (conventional or IGCC). This is documented in a May 2003 report by the National Coal Council titled “Coal-Related Greenhouse Gas Management Issues” and available at http://www.nationalcoalcouncil.org/Documents/fpb.pdf.

of the report states:

"N2O has a [Global Warming Potential] 296 times that of CO2. Because of its long lifetime (about 120 years) it can reach the upper atmosphere, depleting the concentration of stratospheric ozone, an important filter of UV radiation. N2O is emitted from fluidized bed coal combustion; global emissions from FBC units are 0.2 Mt/year, representing approximately 2% of total known sources. N2O emissions from PC units are much lower. Typical N2O emissions from FBC units are in the range of 40-70 ppm (at 3% O2). This is significant because at 60 ppm, the N2O emission from the FBC is equivalent to 1.8% CO2, an increase of about 15% in CO2 emissions for an FBC boiler. Several techniques have been proposed to control N2O emissions from FBC boilers, but additional research is necessary to develop economically and commercially attractive systems."

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions can reasonably be expected to be regulated within the lifetime of the GERRP project and ought to be limited from the outset, considering that Pennsylvania is already responsible for 1% of the world's GHG emissions and that GHG emissions are 15% higher from CFBs.

Abuse of Process

The comment period initially advertised was to close two days before the public hearing of March 30th. This was clearly recognized as problematic, as is evidenced by the Department’s decision to extend the comment period to April 12th. However, the extended comment period was not published in the Pennsylvania Bulletin, and presumably was not published in the local papers, either. It was also unusual for DEP to hold an informational meeting AFTER the public hearing, ensuring that information obtained in the informational meeting cannot be used in testimony at the public hearing. This might be more significant if the DEP answered questions at the informational meeting. However, most questions brought forth in the informational meeting were not answered at the meeting and the public was told that these concerns would be answered in the comment/response document. Efforts were made by the Sierra Club to get answers to many basic questions in a letter to DEP months before the hearing. These questions also went unanswered and Sierra Club was also told that their questions would be answered in the comment/response document. Comment/response documents are issued after a permit is granted and – of course – after the close of the comment period. This process has denied the public the right to submit fully informed comments within the comment period time frame.

Sincerely,

Mike Ewall