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Springfield activist Will Reynolds was part of a
Sierra Club team that negotiated cleaner air from the city utility’s
new coal-fired power plant, but his environmental concerns don’t
involve birds and fish, nor is he well versed in the causes and effects of
global warming. Instead, Reynolds is fighting for his health. Suffering from asthma, Reynolds has had to curtail
the wilderness hikes he loves on days when smog alerts advise vulnerable
populations, such as children, the elderly and those with respiratory
problems, to stay indoors. Those air-quality warnings — prompted by
dangerous emissions from coal-fired power plants — too often kept him
out of the Great Smoky Mountains when he lived in eastern Tennessee. The
memory of being sidelined in the Volunteer State surfaced again last year
when City Water, Light & Power announced plans for a new coal-fired
power plant that would spew more life-threatening dirty particles into the
air. “No one can tell me that energy issues
don’t affect my wilderness experience,” Reynolds says.
“That plant will be here for decades. Now’s the time to do
something about it, or else it would be too late.”
Reynolds is one of a new breed of activist who fights
for environmental safeguards but defies the “tree-hugger”
label. They align in support of far-ranging goals that stretch the
boundaries of 1970s environmentalism: to decrease the incidence of cancers,
heart attacks and strokes caused by environmental toxins, to eliminate
mercury damage to children’s developing brains, to reduce waste and
promote recycling, and to safely eat fish from local rivers, drink pure
water, and breathe fresh air. Thanks in part to e-mail alerts and the burgeoning
awareness of global warming spurred by former Vice President Al
Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, this growing volunteer army can be quickly mobilized to
speak at local hearings, write letters to politicians and newspapers, and
sway public opinion. Behind the legwork are groups such as the Sierra Club
and the Chicago-based Environmental Law & Policy Center, which back
activists by filing lawsuits to seek redress for environmental damage or to
hold up permits for new power plants. Recently these orchestrated campaigns have forced big
utilities to factor in environmental responsibility along with profits. When private equity firms proposed a leveraged buyout
of Texas utility TXU, environmental groups led by the National Resources
Defense Council sought a number of concessions, including dropping plans
for eight of 11 new coal-fired power plants in the state. In exchange,
environmentalists agreed to cease their objection to the
corporation’s sale or its three new plant permits. Here in Illinois, more than 50 groups, from the
American Lung Association to the sport-fishing organization Trout
Unlimited, united behind Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s plan to control
mercury emissions, winning strict new standards that sailed to final
passage in January. The new mercury rule will shut down three of the oldest
coal-fired plants in the state and dramatically improve air quality by
reducing emissions of mercury, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxide. The plan
will also remove 2.1 million tons of carbon dioxide, one of the main
chemicals associated with global warming. “The nexus of mothers, children’s health,
environment, public health, and fish-and-wildlife interests came together
on this,” explains Max Muller, an environment advocate for
Environment Illinois who was involved in setting the mercury standard. Last
year, his group alone delivered 5,900 postcards and letters to the Illinois
Pollution Control Board in favor of tougher emission controls. “It
takes a lot to get businesses to change their practices.”
Forming a broad coalition of interests not typically
considered environmental “made us much stronger,” adds ELPC
executive director Howard Learner, who helped craft the rule. “We
learned that was a different approach that was more effective.”
Faced with widespread public opposition and the
threat of imminent legislation, the state’s three major coal-power
producers finally negotiated. “We were willing to write a rule that was as
easy as possible for them to comply with and still achieve our
goals,” Muller recalls. “We had no incentive to design a rule
like that until they came to the table.”
First, Ameren agreed to reduce mercury emissions by
90 percent at seven power plants in central and southern Illinois by
mid-2009 — much faster than the 70 percent reduction required by 2018
under federal rules. Ameren will spend $1.6 billion in technology upgrades
for the cleanup, including reductions in nitrogen oxide by 2012 and sulfur
dioxide by 2015. The utility will also reduce pollution generated here in
Illinois, rather than trading in credits purchased from other states. Next, Dynergy hammered out a pact with state
officials to spend $118 million to reduce mercury and sulfur dioxide
emissions at plants in Havana, Hennepin, Oakwood, Alton, and Baldwin. The
changes will leave those facilities some of the cleanest in the nation. The
utility had previously agreed to settle a federal lawsuit and spend $675
million to clean up sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide at the Baldwin
facility, located outside St. Louis. Finally, Midwest Generation, one of the state’s
biggest coal utilities, negotiated to reduce mercury pollution at three
plants — Pilsen, Little Village, and Waukegan — by next year
and at Romeoville, Joliet, and Peoria by mid-2009. All six of the plants
will cut emissions of nitrogen oxide 68 percent by 2012 and sulfur dioxide
80 percent by 2018.
Government agencies and independent monitoring groups
agree that health-threatening toxins are showing up on more environmental
tests around the country, but exposure is dangerously high in Illinois and
other states that rely on coal for power. Power-plant mercury, which settles in rivers and
streams, where it is converted to methylmercury and absorbed by fish,
damages the heart, brain, and immune system. The toxin has been linked to
an increased incidence of heart attacks, cerebral palsy, lower IQ, and
other cardiopulmonary and neurological problems. The
state Environmental Protection Agency has estimated that Illinois’s
21 coal-fired power plants emit 71 percent of the state’s mercury
pollution, or about 7,000 pounds of mercury each year. Only five other
states exceed that level. Power-plant
emissions from the nation’s 51 dirtiest coal plants cause 5,500
premature deaths each year, according to the U.S. EPA’s consultant
Abt Associates. The
Chicago chapter of the American Lung Association calls Chicago the asthma
epicenter of the nation, with 23,650 asthma attacks each year and a
hospitalization rate close to double the national average. In some
neighborhoods, asthma strikes more than a quarter of the children under the
age of 12. Of 28
state legislators who volunteered to be tested for mercury exposure last
year by the advocacy group Mercury Free Illinois, nine showed dangerous
levels exceeding the 1 part per million established by the federal EPA and
the Food & Drug Administration for women up to age 49 and children
under 16 years old. Environment
Illinois reported that the average sport fish taken from 36 Illinois
counties, 66 lakes and streams, and 16 fish species exceeded EPA
methylmercury limits for children and women of childbearing age who eat
fresh fish twice per week. The good news is that sustained cleanup efforts have
proved successful. Mercury levels in fish and waterways declined
dramatically over 10 to 15 years in the Everglades when Florida cut mercury
emissions, according to a report by the Bureau of Water to the Illinois EPA
when the rule was being debated. Nonetheless, power plants have long resisted the cost
of cleanup and industry groups have promoted the idea that environmental
responsibility means a loss of jobs — an argument that today’s
activists call a false choice. “Good environmental policy is identical
to good economic policy,” says environmental advocate Robert F.
Kennedy Jr., who spoke last month at Illinois State University in Normal. Kennedy contends that a truly free market would
properly value natural resources rather than keeping prices artificially
low by protecting polluting industries. “The best thing that could happen to the
environment is if we had a true free-market economy,” he says.
Polluting corporations who skirt regulation “impose costs on the rest
of society that should in a true free market be reflected in the cost of
their products.”
Increased mercury levels mean that fishermen can no
longer safely eat any catch from the rivers in Illinois and 17 other
states, he adds, in large part because of environmental rollbacks in the
Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act under President George W. Bush’s
administration. Even so, the ELPC notes that the worst offenders are
the inefficient old power plants that were grandfathered in under 1977
revisions to the Clean Air Act, and two-thirds of those are still operating
today. Additionally, some two dozen new coal plants have been proposed in
Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio. Health and environmental groups pore over these new
applications, looking to pressure utilities to add energy purchases of wind
power and clean-energy alternatives to their portfolios and hold up permits
until utilities design plants with the latest pollution controls available.
In October, for example, the Sierra Club won a federal lawsuit in southern
Illinois that will bar EnviroPower from using an outdated permit to
construct a 500 megawatt coal-fired power plant in Franklin County. The
judge’s ruling means the Benton plant must contain the latest air
pollution controls and conform to stricter emissions rules than those
required when the original permit was issued in 2001. But the ELPC’s Howard Learner believes, like
Kennedy, that these environmental concessions don’t have to come at
the expense of jobs. “For years there was that old false myth that
it’s jobs versus the environment, and that’s wrong —
it’s simply incorrect,” insists Learner, vice chairman of the
governor’s Illinois Climate Change Advisory Group, which is working
with the state EPA, scientists, and business leaders to identify
cost-effective ways to cut greenhouse gases. For example, although the ELPC supports wind energy
as a “win-win-win for farmers, rural economic development, and the
environment,” Learner says he also backs the coal industry’s
global-warming solution of the coal-gasification process known as
FutureGen. Two Illinois sites are under consideration for the experimental
near-zero-emissions plant — Mattoon and Tuscola — that will
utilize coal mined in Illinois and create as many as 1,300 construction
jobs and 150 permanent positions once the plant goes online in 2012. Despite the appeal of retaining coal-industry jobs,
environmentalists do not universally support FutureGen. Sequestering carbon dioxide underground, the
cornerstone of FutureGen’s breakthrough emissions controls, “is
a promise that hasn’t been achieved yet,” observes Environment
Illinois’s Max Muller. “We don’t want to see the buildup
of a whole industry based on untested technology.”
Nuclear is another energy source that rankles most
local groups, although high-profile environmentalists such as Greenpeace
co-founder Patrick Moore are defending nuclear power as a low-carbon
alternative capable of saving the planet from catastrophic climate change.
Both ELPC and the Ecology Action Center, in Normal, whose mission is to
reduce waste and promote recycling, oppose Exelon Corp.’s plan to
expand its nuclear reactor in Clinton. “Nuclear waste is a huge concern,”
explains EAC director Michelle Covi. However, she says, at past hearings
intended to gather public input on the plant’s environmental impact
the group’s objections to radioactive waste were brushed aside. “They say that’s not the issue
here,” she adds. “They’ve got some sort of assurance from
the federal government that it will be taken care of someday.”
As new energy alternatives evolve, environmental
groups must also keep pace by setting new priorities. About two years ago the Sierra Club called a summit
of its leaders, volunteers, and staff to define its direction, says Becki
Clayborn, regional rep for the club’s Midwest Clean Energy Campaign.
Nationally the group has shifted from advocating land preservation and
wilderness to influencing renewable-energy policies and confronting
global-warming pollution, she says. As a guideline, Sierra Club adopted a
report by the American Solar Energy Society that proposes increasing the
renewable sources such as wind and solar to 40 percent of national energy
use by 2030. “It says that if we use some specific
renewable-energy programs that we can reduce our carbon dioxide emissions
60 percent to 80 percent below 1990 levels, and we can do it without
investing more in nuclear or coal,” Clayborn says. The Sierra Club still faces an uphill battle. An
alternative report issued by the Electric Power Research Institute has
gotten more media attention by calling for a slower renewable-energy
rollout, from today’s 1.6 percent to 6.7 percent of the
nation’s electric energy portfolio by 2030. Working with CWLP, Will Reynolds, a member of the
Sangamon Valley Sierra Club board, urged CWLP to offer consumers a choice
of purchasing some power from alternative sources such as wind and solar
and to operate more transparently by inviting input and ideas at public
forums. Two of these community energy meetings have been held this year,
and five more are scheduled, including one at 6 p.m. Thursday, April 19, at
the Illinois National Bank Conference Center, 431 S. Fourth St. A big part of negotiating, Reynolds says, is simply
challenging the mindset that coal is locally available, cheap, and
“the way things have always been done.” Riding a wave of public
opinion, activists can demand that businesses and politicians lead the way
to innovative solutions to the country’s energy problems.
“One thing that’s nice about a public
utility is the citizens own it, so we can say, ‘This is what we want
our utility to do,’ ” he says.
Citizen activists who promote change “can lead
to CWLP doing some new and interesting things.”
Joan Villa of White Heath, a regular
contributor, has written for Variety, the Hollywood Reporter, the Los Angeles Times, and other
publications. Her story about wind power, “The new wind rush,”
was published in our Sept. 28, 2006 edition.
This article appears in Apr 12-18, 2007.
