This news story originally provided by The Daily Mail

August 27, 2004

Report cites power plants for pollution

By The Associated Press
Friday August 27, 2004

West Virginia's Mount Storm power plant emits more arsenic and chromium pollution than any other coal-fired plant in the country, according to a new national study.

The plant, located in Tucker County, also ranks second in the nation in the amount of lead emitted by its smokestacks, according to the study released Thursday by the Clean Air Task Force, the National Environmental Trust and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

Those pollutants and about 60 others emitted by power plants would be unregulated under a rule proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to regulate mercury emissions, according to the report.

The Mount Storm plant is owned by Dominion Virginia Power Co.

The plant was one of eight power stations the utility agreed to upgrade last year as part of a $1.2 billion settlement with the EPA to reduce emissions of acid rain-causing sulfur dioxide and smog-causing nitrogen oxides.

"West Virginia's power plants are emitting tens of thousands of tons of lead, arsenic and other hazardous air pollutants," said Vivian Stockman, project coordinator for the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition.

"The Bush plan (for regulating mercury) would ignore the Clean Air Act by keeping all these other extremely harmful substances completely unregulated," Stockman said.

According to the environmental groups, the proposed rule includes "buried . . . legalese" that would allow power producers to avoid controls for dozens of other toxic air pollutants.