The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday temporarily pulled the plug on a planned South Dakota coal-fired power plant, citing conflicts with the Clean Air Act, Minnesota Public Radio’s Mark Steil reports.
The agency has filed several objections, via letter, to an air quality permit granted last November by the South Dakota Board of Minerals and Environment for the proposed plant, known as Big Stone II.
Estimated to cost $1.6 billion, the new facility would supply between 500 and 580 megawatts of electricity to 400,000 homes throughout Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Iowa.
"We identified three key issues of the state's title five permit that we determined were not consistent with the requirements of the Clean Air Act," said the EPA’s Carl Daly, regional air permitting unit chief for the agency’s Denver office.
The EPA’s objections include the output limits the permit allows for the chemicals sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide – both contribute to acid rain – and whether proper controls exist to monitor the plant’s overall emissions.
South Dakota regulators and plant officials have 90 days make the required changes. Daly said he doesn’t expect that to be a problem.
Environmental groups opposed to Big Stone II applauded the EPA’s decision, and said they intend to keep fighting the proposed coal plant, which they argue will each year emit as much carbon dioxide as hundreds of thousands of cars.
Coal’s environmental impact has been under increased scrutiny recently; particularly after an accident last month at an eastern Tennessee plant dumped 500 million gallons of toxic coal-ash across hundreds of acres of surrounding river valley.
More than 1,300 similar dumps – each filled with hazardous heavy metals like arsenic, lead and mercury – exist across the country, unregulated and unmonitored, writes Shaila Dewan of The New York Times.
In Minnesota, the Tennessee disaster prompted the promise of renewed inspections by state engineers of three prominent coal-ash dikes, each 18 to 50 feet high, according to the Star Tribune’s David Shaffer.