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Environmental officials will hold a public hearing on a permit requiring mercury control technology to be installed on the Indian River power plant. Environmentalists who requested the hearing are concerned over the way new, mercury-laden waste that will be generated will be stored. State officials say they hope the hearing process does not further delay installing the systems. NRG Energy, owner of the Indian River power plant, is under a consent order with the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC) to cut air emissions of mercury and greenhouse gasses.
By that order, the plant must also shut down its oldest two coal incinerating units by 2011. Because they will be operating three more years, the two old units need the mercury control technology. To reduce mercury emissions, NRG Energy wants to install activated carbon injection technology in each of its four units. The activated carbon will capture mercury vapor and salts, said John Austin, a member of local group Citizens for Clean Power. Currently, abut 60 percent of the mercury emitted as a result of coal burning is captured in fly ash, said DNREC Air Quality Management Section head Ali Mirzakhalili. It is stored in the open landfill on the power plant site. About 90 percent of the mercury not captured by current technology will be caught on the activated carbon, said Mirzakhalili. Austin said he favors the technology, which he says is necessary to control mercury emissions. But he wants to know what will be done with the carbon after mercury has collected on it. He said mercury vapor can eventually escape carbon and mercury salts can leach off. “Will it be allowed to blow off the top of the landfill and out into the creek?” he asked. The used carbon should be designated as hazardous waste and handled as such, he said. Fly ash is collected and deposited in an on-site landfill. The landfill currently in use is unlined. Austin said mercury can leach out of the pile and into groundwater.
“Operation of the new air permits cannot be done without consideration of the solid wastes problems that will result,” Austin said.
Austin said the flyash and the new carbon injection waste must be put in a lined and covered landfill to keep mercury from leaching into the water or blowing off the flyash pile.
Mirzakhalili said waste generated from the new technology will be managed in the same way flyash is managed now: in a landfill overseen by DNREC’s Solid Waste Division.
Jae-Soo Chang, an engineer in that department, is a project officer on NRG Energy’s permit request to install a new landfill. He said the new landfill will be lined and that the company is required to take measures, such as employing covers or chemical binder solutions, to prevent flyash dust from blowing away. A hearing on that application will be held sometime in the future, both Jae-Soo and Mirzakhalili said.
Contact Leah Hoenen at leah@capegazette.com
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