State accuses AEP's Titus County plant
of
massaging emission reports
By HUDSON OLD
Journal Publisher
Some of the generating industry's heaviest hitters are fighting a quiet war that swirls in the invisible air over Titus County.
The line-up includes our state's lame duck environmental agency, wounded last year by a "scathing report" issued by a private environmental group and a state audit concluding that in Texas, environmental enforcement is "weak, inconsistent and overly friendly to the industries it is supposed to regulate," wrote Dallas Morning News reporter Randy Lee Loftis.
|
Mr. Loftis broke the story in July. At its center is American Electric Power's (AEP) Welsh Power plant. Those drawn and wading into the fray include Michael G. Morris, chairman of AEP, one of the nation's largest utilities. Then there's Eric Schaeffer, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) enforcement chief who resigned in protest of Bush White House policies. Also featured is Tom "Smitty" Smith, Texas director of Public Citizen.
The key man is Bill Wilson, a former AEP engineer. Late last winter, Mr. Wilson began feeding regulators and environmental groups a steady diet of company documents. Allegations of AEP's environmental sins smoldered in various offices through the spring, then burst into flame when the Morning News put the story on page one in July. A day after that story hit the streets, a second story said the state would file a "major case" against AEP within days.
By then, AEP had dismissed Mr. Wilson, who had worked with the company's permits and pollution controls. The company says his dismissal has nothing to do with his whistle blowing.
"Filing a complaint does not make an employee immune to disciplinary actions for issues not related to the complaint," AEP Chairman Michael G. Morris told the Morning News.
|
As head of the Environmental Integrity Project, ex-EPA enforcement officer Mr. Schaeffer said the ex-AEP engineer's allegations merit criminal investigation because the company knew about them.
He's right. They knew, and here's proof.
One of the allegations filed by Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) relates to information reported by the company years earlier and discovered when state workers responded to Mr. Wilson's charges by opening an investigation during which they read their own files.
"They [AEP] reported it [but] nobody at the state caught it," said Leroy Biggers, director of TCEQ's Tyler-based region 5 office. "That was caught during the investigation."
As Texas director of the environmental group Public Citizen, Mr. Smith weighed in, re-stating a Public Citizen issue broadening the scope of allegations.
"The emissions from these plants aren't just hazardous to those who live around them, but also harm those who are living downwind in cities like Dallas-Fort Worth and Longview-Marshall," Mr. Smith told the Morning News.
Among those who shape environmental policy and regulation, this is "high profile," said Adrea Dawidczik, a spokesman for the state environmental office.
THE OPP
(Other Power Plant)
There are two giant generating facilities here.
TXU's Monticello Steam Electric Station (MOSES) is high profile. The company's mining division owns 30,000 acres, more than 10 percent of Titus County. The mining operation provides fuel to the generating facility at Monticello.
On the other side of the county is the Welsh Power Plant, now owned by Ohio-based AEP. Burning fuel shipped by rail from Wyoming's Powder River basin, the plant was built by Southwestern Electric Power Company (SWEPCO), now a division of AEP.
TXU's plant makes a little more juice, but for perspective's sake, the two plants make enough electricity to power about a million homes. Big outfits.
Say you're a local reporter wanting to talk to TXU. You call their local manager, Gordon Hall.
The phone number for AEP's Welsh facility isn't provided in local directories.
To talk to somebody speaking for them, contact Pat D. Hemlepp, director, corporate media relations, in Columbus, Ohio.
Look for TXU teams at local charity events.
Look for AEP guys at the plant.
Look for either on local tax rolls, adding hundreds of millions to property appraisals.
Pretty regularly, TXU trumpets local news releases of environmental acclaim. Why wouldn't they? Monticello mine reclamation projects have won the nation's highest awards.
Pretty regularly, AEP buys public service ads, a traditional policy dating back to the days of public utility regulation in Texas.
The regulation issue is another one separating TXU and AEP. TXU's generating operations fell under deregulation legislation in Texas. Because AEP's Texas operations are part of the old SWEPCO grid stretching across state lines into regulated territory, Texas legislators deemed it fair to allow AEP to continue some Texas operations under regulated policies.
That's why the Geezerplex remains a captive market for AEP. It's why residential consumers here can't - like other Texans - choose electrical providers.
It's okay. Relatively speaking, our juice is cheap enough.
And it's okay that nothing short of inside connections can get you a number for the local AEP generating plant. AEP's business is its business, at least until it crosses the open record lines of government regulation.
As the current battle brews, what's not fair is confusing TXU with AEP as this tale swirls into the multi-faceted abyss of bureaucracy.
The dim trail to environmental enlightenment
Somewhere in the bowels of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, as hirlings continue passing papers in circles, logic insists there exists the lab-test protocol answering the most serious of environmental allegations leveled against AEP's Welsh facility in Titus County.
Among the TCEQ's allegations against Welsh, the most environmentally-charged issue involves sulphur emissions.
The Welsh plant periodically exceeds hourly emission limits, concluded Celeste Lane, environmental investigator for TCEQ's Tyler office.
Taken annually, the plant's sulphur emissions are less than half what's allowed by the permits, according 2003 EPA reports.
Ms. Lane's initial study of plant records includes alleged violation of sulphur permit levels on four days over three years.
"I looked from June 2001 through May, 2004," Ms. Lane said, finding "two or three days" fuel burned at Welsh contained more than the one half percent sulphur content specified by permit.
"But that was based [on sulphur content as measured] on a wet basis," she said. "I had them [AEP] go back and give me dry weight numbers. Then it went from a few days to over 200 days."
The permit holds the company accountable for providing data.
In addition to fuel composition info from the Wyoming coal supplier, AEP's lab checks shipments, said Mr. Hemlepp, the company spokesman.
The crux of the argument boils down to the testing method, Ms. Lane said.
"The more moisture in the sample tested, the more the sulphur is diluted," she said.
Lab protocol is defined by the American Society of Testing Methods (ASTM.)
"There are approved methods for sampling coal that address moisture content," Mr. Hemlepp said. "We use the approved test."
Asked to cite stated permit requirements pertaining to tests, Mr. Hemlepp deferred to the Texas investigators.
Mr. Biggers, the TCEQ's Tyler director, provided an agency-generated permit "Renewal Analysis & Technical Review" with parenthetical reference to a "dry basis" test. The review isn't part of the permit.
"We don't tell them specifically how to test," Mr. Biggers said. "The standard tells them how to test."
Now mentally twisting about emission violations at a power plant operating at half of its annual permitted emission rate, I called Ohio to give the company another shot at this sulphur thing.
"We've specifically and clearly answered that allegation in a letter addressed to the state's enforcement coordinator and the Tyler office," Mr. Hemlepp said. "Not only do we use approved sampling methods, we take environmental compliance issues seriously. We've been one of the nation's leading power generators for decades and we plan to be in this business a long time, so there's no logic in ignoring compliance requirements."
The conversation ends there, with company lawyers declining to discuss their response to the state.
TCEQ officials in Tyler and Austin passed on the same question.
The American Society of Testing Standards said that without a specific test reference number, they couldn't help.
IMPRESS YOUR FRIENDS
Here's a sentence for the coffee shop, a sentence with the added advantage of being true:
"You know, Bob, as they relate to the use of carbon-based fuels used in electrical generation, the efficiency of the electro-static percipitators, or ESP's as I like to call them, is directly related to the issue of maintenance."
Translation: Clogged filters don't work.
ESP's employ an electrical charge to collect particulate matter. If you have an ESP on your chimney, you should clean it.
At the Welsh Power plant, that's done by sandblasting. Nobody says they have to, but the plant uses a vacuum truck in tandem with its fixed "bag house" to capture what comes out.
Don't you hate it when you've finished vacuuming the house, and the bag's full, and you turn off the machine and a little puff of fine particulates exhausts at the bag connection?
There's an environmental term for this loose-gasket phenomenon - fugitive dust.
When the people at Welsh used the vacuum truck they didn't have to use, they didn't record the fugitive dust they didn't have to vacuum.
Violation.
Nor did they report that they didn't record the fugitive dust.
Another violation.
There's a violation about the plant burning more fuel than it is permitted to burn. That's not an emission violation. It's a fuel violation, TCEQ track number 167495.
There's a second violation about too much fuel: 167495, The Sequel. Or, just call it 167496, like the TCEQ does.
Have I mentioned AEP's failure to certify compliance? They filed a deviation report instead of the proper compliance report. The TCEQ narrative describing violation 167498 gives no further clues as to what permitted standard has been deviated from. Nor could Mr. Biggers put his finger on what that deviation might be, "without going back and checking the record."
On the record, from its Austin headquarters, a TCEQ spokesman said discussion pertaining to these allegations is on going.