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NRG Energy wants to install new technology at the Indian River power plant to drastically reduce the amount of mercury that is emitted into air.
But critics say plans to store the solid wastes that will capture the mercury are woefully inadequate.
More than 30 Sussex County citizens turned out at a permit hearing for the Indian River power plant to tell state officials that proposed technologies to remove mercury from the air could result in new threats to public health.
The hearing was for an air quality permit for technology that will reduce air emissions. The proposed process will generate mercury-laden solid waste, but no one from the solid waste section of the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC) was present at the hearing.
After the hearing, the record was closed on the permit, although two speakers requested an additional two weeks to prepare and submit written comments. Speakers walked away frustrated and disappointed.
“That was an example of the stovepipe of government, where the permit writers for air quality management do not interact with the permit writers for solid waste management. All divisions interact separately until the very top of the organization,” said Rehoboth Beach resident John Austin.
NRG Energy, owner of the power plant, requested a permit to install activated-carbon injection technology at the power plant, an effort designed to reduce mercury emissions in the air by up to 80 percent. Mercury bonds to carbon injected into boiler exhaust.
But the technology will generate mercury-laden solid waste. Ensuring proper disposal of that waste is what brought residents to the hearing.
The used carbon will be disposed of in the site’s unlined fly ash landfill.
Power plant manager John Robertson said NRG Energy and plant staff are excited about their new pollution control measures. Some, such as technology to reduce sulfur and nitrogen oxides, were installed ahead of schedule, he said.
Austin, a former Environmental Protection Agency scientist said, “The goal is good – to reduce mercury emissions. What you do with that mercury – now that you have it in hand – is the issue.”
Austin requested that DNREC, the agency issuing the permit, address how and where the waste will be disposed of.
Hearing officer Robert Haynes said management of solid waste is not part of the air quality monitoring process.
Thomas Sullivan, a Millsboro resident, questioned DNREC representatives on how they would know the air quality standards set forth in the consent order between DNREC and NRG Energy are being met at the Wednesday, May 7 hearing. That consent order, aimed at reducing air pollutants, is the impetus behind the need for mercury control technology.
“The only time you know about it is when they tell you,” Sullivan said, to a round of applause. He told the audience of more than 30 people he had requested data from DNREC after his wife fell ill with respiratory problems. Sullivan said he believed at the time her illness was caused by power plant pollution, but a DNREC official told him the facility was self-regulating and that he could not be told details of its operations.
Haynes disagreed with that account, saying the department has the right to inspect records and the facility.
Unlined landfill called inadequate
Dr. Kim Furtado, a naturopathic physician practicing in Rehoboth Beach, didn’t mince words with state and NRG Energy representatives. She said she was pleased, though not ecstatic, the initial standards were being pursued, but then said, “I am frustrated, angered and disappointed that mercury and other heavy metals would be put in this community in an unlined landfill.”
Austin wants to see the new waste put in a lined, covered landfill to prevent mercury from blowing off the top of the fly-ash stack and from leaching into groundwater.
“You need to connect the dots with what will happen after the activated carbon injection technology is installed,” Furtado said.
Residents pressed DNREC officials to tell them why the air section and solid waste section could not have a meeting of the minds to address in tandem the issue of cutting mercury emissions and handling the waste resulting from it.
“It is correct that you are not prepared to talk about the mercury being put in the landfill?” asked Chris Bason, a scientist for the Center for the Inland Bays, who spoke on his own behalf as an individual citizen. “It sounds like the smart thing to do would be to figure out the risk of putting the mercury in the landfill before you go ahead with the course of action,” he said.
“This place is a neighbor to a population that is bearing the burden of a higher rate of cancer,” said Furtado to plant manager John Robertson. “The moral thing for you to do is to place this waste in a lined, controlled landfill,” she said.
Lewes resident Brook Freeman said saw many neighbors suffer with brain tumors, and survived esophageal cancer himself. “It’s got to have something to do with what’s going on here. I know you try to pull and twist all your data to make other reasons for our bad health,” he said to Haynes and three other DNREC representatives.
The Indian River power plant is one of the worst polluters in the state. A cancer cluster was identified in the Millsboro area last summer, but state officials have not linked it to the coal-fired facility, despite strong feelings from area residents that it is the culprit.
Nevertheless, Robertson said, “We’re excited about what we’re doing at the plant. We’ve been implementing solutions to make us better neighbors.”
But Citizens for a Better Sussex President Joan Deaver told him the plant wasn’t welcome. “You don’t belong here. People move here in droves – they don’t know about your unlined landfill, your nasty pollutants and how you fought state regulations. You have no excuse for the way you maintain those fly ash pits,” she charged.
Old landfill may be cleaned up
While the power plant is under a consent order to cut air emissions, DNREC has plans to get an older part of the property cleaned up.
The Burton Island Old Ash Landfill is at the end of the Burton’s Island peninsula. It was used by the plant when it was owned by Delmarva Power to dispose of coal ash from 1957 to 1979. DNREC’s Timothy Ratsep said water activity is causing the land to erode, allowing sediment to erode into the water.
The department wants to use riprap and cutbacks to stabilize the shore to prevent further sediment erosion into the waterway.
DNREC is recommending no action be taken on the river sediment in the area. Ratsep said tests done on sediment have not shown heavy metal contamination.
The sediment and the eroding berm will be the topics of the public hearing. The department has not yet fully studied nor made a recommendation on the inner part of the landfill.
The hearing will be at 6 p.m., Thursday, May 29, at the Town of Millsboro Civic Center at 322 Wilson Highway in Millsboro.
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