Cliffside Revisions Proposed: N.C. Official’s Report Recommends Air Permit for Duke’s Plans to Expand Coal Plant

By Bruce Henderson, The Charlotte Observer, N.C.

Dec. 22–A state official, responding to critics of Duke Energy’s plan to expand a coal-fired power plant west of Charlotte, recommends more than a dozen revisions be made before the project gets a final go-ahead.

Duke would build an 800-megawatt boiler and retire four old units at the Cliffside plant in Rutherford County. Duke says the expanded plant will feature state-of-the-art pollution controls.

Critics charge that it won’t be as clean as possible and will double Cliffside’s emissions of planet-warming carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is not regulated, making it outside the state’s jurisdiction.

The N.C. Division of Air Quality got 1,865 written comments on the plan, two-thirds of them opposed. Among the critics are two federal agencies.

The National Park Service has predicted “severe impacts” to Great Smoky Mountains National Park from the plant’s emissions, and challenged the lack of study of pollutants that cause visibility-robbing haze. The Environmental Protection Agency has questioned issuing a permit before a key enforcement case is resolved.

Margaret Love, regional supervisor for the N.C. Division of Air Quality in Winston-Salem, presided over a Sept. 18 hearing on the expansion. In a report last week, she recommended Duke receive an air permit, but with revisions.

She also responded to criticisms of a draft permit. They included:

–A lack of review of the plant’s emissions of nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxides, which form ozone and haze, to ensure that they won’t significantly worsen the region’s air.

Duke met the terms of a 2006 state law, Love wrote, that gave the utility credit for pollution reductions at Cliffside under the state Clean Smokestacks Act. Those benefits meant the plant’s net emissions would not rise.

But Love recommended that the state address charges that incremental impacts of nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxides on wilderness areas, such as the Great Smokies, weren’t evaluated.

–The state should not grant a permit until federal charges that Duke illegally modified Cliffside without updating pollution controls in the 1990s are resolved. The U.S. Supreme Court, in a victory for environmentalists, has returned the case to a lower court.

“If and when it is found by the courts that Duke’s previous modifications at Cliffside were made in violation of (clean-air) requirements, (the Division of Air Quality) will evaluate the changes necessary to the permit,” Love wrote.

Love also recommended that the division re-evaluate the plant’s ability to capture mercury, a toxic element that contaminates N.C. waterways. The division has previously said that it would take another look at best-available mercury controls.

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