Coal plants cannot win

Thursday, Oct. 15, 2009 | 2:05 a.m.

Adding scrubbers to the chimneys of coal-fired power plants is a common solution to reducing foul air that causes health and environmental hazards. But the solution has created another problem of equal concern.

The New York Times reported Tuesday that many power plants across the nation that have installed scrubbers are essentially trading air pollution for water pollution.

Scrubbers shoot a mixture of water and chemicals down through the chimneys. They do trap tons of pollutants that otherwise would have dispersed themselves over thousands of miles after escaping with the smoke.

But the pollutants have not disappeared. They become either sludge that is dumped in landfills, or particles in wastewater that is flushed into area waterways.

Sludge is dumped in landfills that are lined, but liners are not a perfect or permanent guard against leaks into ground water. And the wastewater is treated before being flushed, but it still contains pollutants that contaminate waterways.

The Times, to illustrate the problem affecting many states, focused on a Pennsylvania power plant 40 miles south of Pittsburgh. It confirmed that many chemicals associated with serious health risks have remained in treated wastewater flushed into the nearby Monongahela River, which provides drinking water for 350,000 people.

Also reported by the Times is that state regulations governing the disposal of power plant discharges are weak. It further noted there are no specific federal regulations covering the issue and that regulations found under more generalized federal laws, such as the Clean Water Act, do not mandate limits on the most dangerous chemicals in power plant waste, such as arsenic and lead.

The bottom line is that coal-fired power plants are heavy polluters despite regulations, scrubbers, lined landfills and on-site treatment facilities. Replacing them with nuclear plants is out of the question because there is no solution to the deadly waste they produce.

The best answer, for now, is to reduce our reliance on coal-generated power by increasing the amount of power produced from clean sources, including solar, wind and geothermal.