Wednesday, May 6, 2009
— Graphic by Tyler Waugh
By the Numbers
In one year, the Lawrence Energy Center emits the following amounts of pollutants: 4,600 tons of NOx, nitrogen oxide. 440 tons of PM, particulate matter. 2,500 tons of SOx (sulphur oxide). 550 tons of CO (Carbon monoxide). 66 tons of VOC (Volatile organic compounds.) Will Stone with KDHE said each of these monitored pollutants are considered criteria pollutants, which the EPA regulates and sets strict limitations on because of their abundance and ability to harm human health and the environment.
Source: Kansas Department of Health and Environment
The Lawrence Energy Center burns 2 to 3 million tons of coal each year.
Source: Bill Eastman, director of environmental services for Westar
EPA studies show that air pollution from power plants triggers asthma attacks, bronchitis and heart disease, and contributes to about 30,000 premature deaths a year.
Source: The Environmental Integrity Project
According to the American Lung Association, 65 percent of electric utility plants were built before enactment of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1977. Some of the older power plants emit harmful pollutants at four to 10 times the rate allowable for new plants built today. Newer plants are held to newer, stricter standards, but that’s not the case with coal-fired plants such as the Lawrence Energy Center, which was built in 1971. Older plants are “grandfathered,” meaning they are held only to the standards that were in place when they were built.
Source: American Lung Association
Mercury: High mercury exposure can lead to tremors, mood swings, nervousness, insomnia, muscle weakness, headaches, twitching and lower cognitive function.
Lead: Exposure to lead can prevent normal functioning of the nervous system, kidneys and blood cells. In children it can slow mental development, shorten attention spans and cause behavioral problems.
PCBs (Polychlorinated Biphenyl): Have been shown to cause cancer, as well as adversely affect the nervous, immune and reproductive systems.
Sulphur oxides: Can cause or worsen asthma, especially in sensitive groups such as children, the elderly and people with heart or lung disease.
Nitrogen oxides: Can damage lung tissue and worsen asthma, especially in susceptible people such as children and the elderly. Nitrogen and sulphur oxides also contribute to acid rain, which causes water bodies to become acidic.
Source: epa.gov
Almost 15 percent of Douglas County residents currently have asthma or have at one point been diagnosed.
The LEC was considered the 12th dirtiest coal-fired plant in the nation in 2007.
Westar Energy plans to spend more than $300 million to make further upgrades to the LEC.
Chaz Steele has lived in Lawrence his whole life. A 14-year sufferer of asthma, Steele, Lawrence senior, has no doubt in his mind that living near Lawrence’s coal-fired plant has contributed to his asthma struggle.
In recent years, Douglas County has experienced asthma rates far above the national average. That’s not surprising to local doctors and national experts, who say that coal-fired plants like the one in Lawrence create levels of air and water pollution that are bad for health.
“When you have a coal plant in your neighborhood, you’re going to have an increased number of people with asthma, and they will have worse problems more often,” said Ronald Weiner, a doctor who has been treating asthma patients in Lawrence for 25 years.
Westar Energy’s coal-fired plant, known as the Lawrence Energy Center (LEC), is one of the dirtiest in the country, according to a 2007 report by the Environmental Integrity Project, a nonprofit organization formed by former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency attorneys. The report ranked the LEC as the 12th dirtiest coal-fired plant out of the nation’s 378 largest, in part because of heavy emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants known as greenhouse gases.
Bill Eastman, director of environmental services for Westar, said he believes the rating is unfair because the EPA hasn’t been regulating plants for greenhouse gases. But on April 17, the EPA announced that greenhouse gases endanger public health. The announcement was considered the agency’s first step toward requiring limitations on these pollutants.
While some residents voice their concern about the LEC’s pollution in the air, others, such as Laura Calwell, with the Kansas River advocacy group Friends of the Kaw, worry about the plant’s effects on local waterways. The Kansas Department of Health and Environment advises against eating fish from the Kansas River in areas around Lawrence because of severe pollution in the water.
Drew Bergman
Lawrence’s coal-fired power plant, the Lawrence Energy Center, rests along the banks of the Kansas River, about five miles north of the Kansas Union.
But others don’t believe the plant’s effects on Lawrence are significant.
“The emissions that come out of that plant, very little of it falls in Douglas County,” said Ted Boyle, president of the North Lawrence Neighborhood Improvement Association. “It’s airborne and goes 50, 60 to 100 miles. It doesn’t just come out of the stack and drop to the ground. There’s probably less of it here than there is 100 miles from here.”
Lawrence Energy Center Emissions
The LEC has been powering Lawrence homes and businesses and sending billowing clouds of smoke into the air from its three tall stacks since its opening in 1971.
“There is no question that anyone who spends any amount of time in Douglas County will be breathing air from the Lawrence Energy Center,” said Karl Brooks, associate professor of history and environmental studies.
The LEC emitted more than 8,300 tons of air pollutants in 2007, the latest figures available, according to KDHE emission summaries. Will Stone, engineer with KDHE, said these pollutants, considered criteria pollutants, are measured by the EPA because they are known to pose threats to human health and the overall health of the environment.
The LEC is also responsible for emitting smaller quantities of toxins such as mercury and lead. Compared with the 4,600 tons of nitrogen oxide released by the plant in 2007, KDHE hazardous air pollution emission summaries showed that only .09 tons of mercury were released. However, this accounted for 100 percent of Lawrence facility mercury emissions. Mercury exposure can cause neurological damage, emotional changes, muscle weakness and respiratory failure, according to the EPA.
Coal-fired plants are responsible for more than 40 percent of all human-caused mercury emissions, according to the EPA.
The LEC emitted .17 tons of lead in 2007. Stone described the emissions as low, though KDHE emissions summaries show that the LEC was responsible for 100 percent of lead emissions in Lawrence in 2007. According to the EPA, areas near utilities such as coal-fired plants have higher levels of lead in the air. Brooks said exposure to lead could lead to muscle, joint and developmental problems in humans.
Coal effects in our river
The LEC is situated on the south bank of the Kansas River, about five miles north of the University. Though eating fish from the river might not be something students need to do to get by, some residents rely on fish from the river as a cheap source of food.
Calwell, river keeper for Friends of the Kaw, said mercury from the coal-fired plant comes into the river through the air.
“A lot of times, mercury in the air settles down in the land and water and turns into a form of mercury that little tiny plants eat, and goes up the food chain and gets into the fish tissue,” Calwell said.
Calwell said that if enough mercury got into a person’s system from eating too much contaminated fish, it could cause memory, behavioral and developmental problems.
Don Huggins, senior scientist with the Kansas Biological Survey, said he didn’t think there were too many serious threats to the river and its aquatic life because of the LEC.
But he does see an issue of environmental justice when it came to fishing. Huggins said some ethnic groups in Lawrence living at or below the poverty line were more likely than others to eat fish from the river because it was cheap. Calwell said Vietnamese and other Asian populations in Lawrence often fish from the river because fishing is a part of their culture.
“I can go buy wild-caught Pacific salmon, where someone else may only have the option to catch from the river below Bowersock Dam,” Huggins said. “We have to look at the needs of our most limited members of the community.”
Bowersock Dam, which is visible from the bridge over the Kansas River from Massachusetts Street, marks an important spot on the river. The KDHE recently released a 2009 fish advisory, which warned residents about what fish from the river were safe to eat. The advisory recommended that no one eat bottom-feeding fish, including catfish and sturgeons, from below the Bowersock Dam downstream to Eudora because of health risks involved with mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs. PCBs are known carcinogens and can cause adverse health effects similar to those of mercury. Levels of these contaminants in the river are considered too high for safe fish consumption.
Coal effects in our air
Carol Ramm, registered respiratory therapist with the American Lung Association, said communities situated near coal-fired power plants have higher incidences of respiratory illnesses such as asthma than communities without the pollution associated with coal-fired plants.
Studies show the asthma incident rate in Douglas County is more than twice that of the national average.
According to the 2006 National Health Interview Survey, about 7 percent of adults in the U.S. have asthma. According to a 2006 to 2007 Kansas Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, nearly 15 percent of adults in Douglas County currently have asthma or have had asthma in their lifetime.
According to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, the Lawrence Energy Center, shown here from the south, released about 8,300 tons of pollutants into the air in 2007. The Environmental Integrity Project from the same year ranked the center as the 12th-dirtiest coal-fired plant in the country.
The Bowersock Dam is located on the Kansas River at the Massachusetts Street bridge. Because of dangerous chemicals such as mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment advised residents against consuming bottom-feeding fish caught below the Bowersock Dam.
Chaz Steele, Lawrence senior said he believed growing up downwind from the coal-fired Lawrence Energy Center contributed to severe asthma attacks during his childhood. Now able to do things such as exercise and drive his motorcycle without breathing problems, Steele credits his improved respiratory heath to getting older and moving away from his parents’ home.
Weiner, who practices at Asthma Allergy and Rheumatology Associates, 346 Maine St., said living near a coal-fired plant had more negative effects on children, the elderly and those already have asthma, but negative repercussions were not limited to those groups. He said he expected the plant to have negative effects on lung health for all Lawrence residents.
“But aside from wearing a mask to filter out stuff in the air, I don’t know what other things people could do,” Weiner said. “It’s either that or you could move.”
Moving wasn’t an option for Chaz Steele, who grew up in Lawrence. Steele has dealt with asthma for most of his life and is familiar with the tightening feeling in his chest.
“It feels like someone is taking their hands and just squeezing my lungs, or like there’s a two-ton elephant sitting on my chest,” Steele said. “I just can’t get a breath in.”
Steele grew up not wanting to let asthma get in his way. He didn’t stay indoors to play, although at times he knew he should have. Growing up, he played hard with the other kids and often paid for it with trips to the nurse’s office and asthma attacks a few times per week. With age, Steele learned how to handle his asthma. He is a registered emergency medical technician and said his training has made him more aware of the physical processes of his asthma.
“As opposed to letting myself get to the point where I need the inhaler, I try to just slow myself down so I don’t have to use it,” Steele said.
Although Steele said it’s normal for the severity of asthma to decline with age, he still uses his albuterol inhaler every week.
Unlike Steele, some Lawrence residents see no harm in living close to the LEC. Boyle, president of the North Lawrence Improvement Association for 13 years, said the coal-fired plant wasn’t discussed much in his association. He said he didn’t think the plant directly affected people living in neighborhoods around it.
“We don’t receive a lot of the emissions from the power plant because the winds blow from the south in the summer and north in the winter,” Boyle said. “So it just generally bypasses us.”
The American Lung Association and the EPA have a different view. Communities settled around coal-fired plants have higher levels of asthma and other respiratory illnesses because pollutants linger in the area. The EPA stated in its Clear Skies study in 2004 that asthma-inducing pollutants such as sulphur oxides and nitrogen oxides can remain in the air near coal plants for days or even years as small solid particles or liquid droplets.
Neighborhood thoughts on the LEC
Boyle isn’t the only one who isn’t fazed by the LEC’s presence in Lawrence. Residents involved in local real estate said the plant rarely surfaces in conversations about housing in the area. Doug Stephens, president of Stephens Real Estate, said that — in his 20 years with the company, he hadn’t heard many complaints about the LEC.
“It’s not like it’s something new, they know what’s there, they know they can see it,” Stephens said.
Dennis Snodgrass, president of McGrew Real Estate, echoed Stephens’ opinions on the area around the LEC.
“Every neighborhood has its pluses and minuses,” Snodgrass said. “North Lawrence has bigger lots and is a little more rural, which draws a lot of people to it. A lot of people are okay with having the plant up north.”
Snodgrass compared the LEC with other things people sometimes preferred not to live near, such as train tracks or power lines.
“But after people live there for a bit, they don’t even notice it anymore,” Snodgrass said. “I would see the plant as something similar, I don’t think it’s going to detract value.”
According to Trulia.com, a real estate research company, the average home price in April for homes in the North Lawrence neighborhoods, those closest to the LEC, was about $139,000. The average home prices for other neighborhoods west of North Lawrence averaged at least $200,000.
But August Dettbarn, appraiser at the Douglas County Appraisers Office, said calculating the difference in Lawrence home values by neighborhood was a difficult task. He said neighborhoods commonly referred to, such as the student ghetto or Old West Lawrence, are different from neighborhoods used to evaluate real estate. Dettbarn said real estate neighborhoods are divided into much smaller sections. Appraisers estimated that if home values in the sections were similar enough, people would be willing to live in any other home in the neighborhood. He said he didn’t know whether the LEC had any effects on the home prices in areas around the coal-fired plant.
The true cost of coal
Coal has long been considered the cheap fuel source for Americans. Coal provides more than 75 percent of electric energy for Kansans, according to the Energy Information Administration at the U.S. Department of Energy.
But Scott Allegrucci, director of the Great Plains Alliance for Clean Energy, or GPACE, said coal only appears to be a cheap fuel source. He said the health costs associated with getting energy from coal should be considered as well.
“The idea that coal is the cheap fuel source of the future is bogus,” Allegrucci said.
The EPA and the Kansas Corporation Commission figure that an additional $20 dollars in health and environmental costs per megawatt-hour arise from coal-fired plants. A megawatt-hour is a term used to explain how many millions of watts can be produced in an hour. Allegrucci said officials ought to take that into account in deciding whether to license any new plants in the state.
“Just when looking at the two coal plants proposed for Holcomb, you’d be talking about something along the lines of $5 billion annually in costs of health care-related issues that come from burning coal,” Allegrucci said. “That doesn’t show up in the utilities’ bottom line. They don’t pay those health costs — we do. We have to look at all the costs that we’re actually paying.”
Allegrucci said health effects mostly included respiratory and heart disease, and environmental costs come from contamination and cleanup of water and the surrounding environment.
“If you have water you can’t use for human consumption or if something makes the fish inedible, it’s the loss of the use of the resource,” Allegrucci said.
Though $5 billion in additional costs of a coal plant seems overwhelming, Allegrucci said it was a low-end estimate. A similar study in Ontario, Canada, in 2004 showed estimated health and environmental costs at $127 per megawatt hour, more than six times the amount figured by the EPA estimate. Despite Allegrucci’s desire for less coal and more renewable forms of energy, he said he understood that the coal-fired plants didn’t deserve all the blame.
“The providers of electrical energy are just doing what they’ve been asked to do,” Allegrucci said. “We haven’t asked them to account for those other costs, but I think we’re moving in that direction.”
What is the LEC doing to clean up?
Bill Eastman is responsible for the environmental regulations and requirements for Westar.
He said two of the three stack units of the LEC were equipped with scrubbers that removed regulated pollutants such as sulphur oxides.
Scrubbers, Eastman said, scrub the gas that rises through the stacks.
A chemical reaction in the stacks turns sulphur into calcium sulphate, a solid that can be removed.
This chemical solidification of the pollutants doesn’t mean the pollutants go away. The solids are then added to water and permanently stored in an on-site landfill.
Unit No. 5, the tallest of the three stacks, has what is called a low NOx, or nitrogen oxide, burner, which keeps the nitrogen oxides from forming when coal is being burned.
In addition to these emission-controlling efforts, Eastman said the LEC would spend more than $300 million by 2013 to further reduce emissions by making more upgrades. Eastman said the LEC has been on a downward trend in its emissions for years, and more plans are in the works to ensure it only gets cleaner with time.
“We’re all on this earth together, and we’ve got to work together to figure out a path forward,” Eastman said. “With the technology now, we’ve got to figure out how to move forward with out current mix until our technology changes. We’re heavily reliant on coal. We’ve got to have a fuel, and we’re obliged to provide it.”
What’s next?
After the April 17 EPA finding that greenhouse gases could prove dangerous to public health, Eastman said meeting new emission regulations might be in the near future for the LEC.
“Any new regulatory process would impact the company, and that’s just part of it,” Eastman said. “We’re trying to get ourselves geared up for that.”
Cathy Milbourn, spokeswoman for the EPA, said the April 17 endangerment finding came after two years of scientific research ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2007, Massachusetts sued the EPA for violating section 202 A of the Clean Air Act.
Section 202 A states that the EPA administrator should set limits on motor vehicle emissions, which included greenhouse gases, that are considered an endangerment to public health and welfare. The Supreme Court found that greenhouse gases should be covered by the Clean Air Act, so the EPA had to determine whether greenhouse gases really did pose a threat to public health, which the endangerment finding showed was the case.
Milbourn said the finding was the first step in getting greenhouse gases, which have never before had emission limitations, regulated similarly to other pollutants.
Newer regulations would require the LEC to make improvements, but some say it’s been doing a good job already. Calwell, from Friends of the Kaw, said she thought the river had gotten considerably cleaner in the past five to 10 years, in part because of upgrades made at the LEC.
New EPA regulations would be sure to paint a prettier picture for all the friends of the Kaw.
Huggins, with the Kansas Biological Survey, said the real problem at hand was the coal industry as a whole, not just the LEC.
“Until we find an alternative, that’s just the price we pay for cheap energy,” Huggins said. “No one wants to hear about giving something up.”
— Edited by Tara Smith
How would Obama reflect on the past year?
1 comment
Mallot and Haworth Halls, two of the larger ...
1 comment
Lawrence Settles Lawrence graduate student “I like T-Pain ...
1 comment
Mallot and Haworth Halls, already two of the ...
1 comment
It was the symmetry of this sidewalk that ...
1 comment
Texting while driving is the cause of many ...
1 comment
Comments
pantheon (anonymous) says...
Good luck getting anybody to switch to a more efficient energy source. If you have two options and one creates less jobs (usually because it's the more efficient and cheaper option) then that's not the one that gets picked. Same reason that coal plants keep getting approved.
May 6, 2009 at 8:14 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
connerm (anonymous) says...
I conjecture that if we look into a lot of the facts listed above we will find they are overblown and not legitimate as arguments against coal power.
May 6, 2009 at 9:17 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
pantheon (anonymous) says...
I'd accept constant production of airborne lead particles as a decent argument against coal power. Lead's generally pretty bad for people and stuff. Actually, a lot of things are probably a bad idea to blow into the air.
May 6, 2009 at 9:28 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
kujayhawk83 (anonymous) says...
An interesting, if mostly one sided essay. Clearly, the writer has a point to make, as opposed to providing a balanced presentation of proveable facts. In that regard it is a decent op-ed piece.
The LEC is part of keeping the lights on in Lawrence, Kansas. It should be made as efficient and pollution free as economically feasible. But until other better and more cost effective options are available on a wide scale, it will be a part of our landscape.
Further, it IS part of the value equation for real estate in the area. But it is not a new surprise or an increasing factor, so it is already built in to the values of neighborhoods nearby.
May 6, 2009 at 9:30 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )