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~a9~ ~~:r ~ h j <br />Craig power debate heats up <br />.Marie Spllsbury Staff Writer <br />CRAIG - A decision to force the <br />raig Power Plant to meet certain feder- <br />Ilv mandated air quality requirements <br />ould be reached this year, according to <br />tote officials. <br />The Craig Power Plant has been <br />operating for nine yeazs without a Title <br />V permit, an operating permit required <br />to meet the federal Clean Air Act of <br />1990. The act calls for states to set up a <br />system to monitor commercial pollu- <br />tants and requires all smokestacks to <br />operate with a Title V. <br />Craig does not have a Title V <br />because there are no air quality stan- <br />dards for power plants in Colorado, <br />according to Christopher Dann, a <br />spokesman for the Colorado Department <br />of Health Air Pollution Division. <br />"We aze still involved .vith discus- <br />sions with the Colorado Utilities <br />Commission for all utility companies so <br />they will all be the same," he said. "We <br />want the permits to be consistent." <br />He expects a decision to be made <br />sometime this month, and to be effective <br />next year. <br />Dave Longwell, support services <br />manager for the Craig Power Plant, said <br />the application has been submitted and <br />the power plant is awaiting information <br />from the state. <br />"We have our application in and <br />every once in a while we call to make <br />sure they are working on it," he said. <br />Smoke is still fanning over the pol- <br />lutants emitted at the Craig plant, but the <br />impacts and outcome are still unknown. <br /> <br />The Sierra Club filed suit in October <br />1996 against the Craig plant after set- <br />tling with the Hayden Power Plant for <br />5130 million to clean up that plant. <br />Federal court dates are still pending on <br />the Craig plant lawsuit. <br />'"fhe fact is, Craig is no cleaner than <br />Hayden. Coal can be burned clean and <br />we would like to see the same thing <br />done to Craig that was done in Hayden," <br />said Steamboat Springs Sierra Club rep- <br />resentative Joan Hoffman. <br />The Sierra Club alleges that stacks <br />number one and two at the plant are not <br />burning clean, and omitting sulfur diox- <br />ide and oxides of nivogen in the air. <br />Both cause acid rain. <br />A third stack, built in 1980, is burn- <br />ing clean, Hoffman said. <br />Longwell said all three stacks are <br />clean. The technology [o bum coal in <br />stacks one and two is older than the <br />technology in stack three, but he insists <br />that all three stacks do the same job. <br />"We were inspected by state and <br />federal inspectors last summer and they <br />said we were in compliance with all <br />aspects of the law," Longwell said. "We <br />work hard to maintain that." <br />However, Longwell did admit that <br />while stack three removes 99.9 percent <br />of the toxins, stacks one and two only <br />remove 70 percent. <br />The state has been reluctant to step <br />in and force the Craig pant to remove <br />more of its toxins because it's hard to <br />prove what the impacts would be if the <br />toxins were removed, said Dan Ely with <br />the Colorado Air Quality Division. <br />"The state likes to act if there is real <br />"The state likes to act as <br />if there is real smoking- <br />gun evidence, but Craig is <br />more in the gray areas.° <br />Dan Ely <br />Colorado Air Quality Division <br />smoking-gun evidence, but Craig is <br />more in the gray areas," he said. "The <br />evidence we have so far is controversial <br />and we don'[ want to enter into regula- <br />tory trench warfare." <br />A state study in 1995 showed that <br />the Craig Power Plant was cleaning 65 <br />percent of its pollutants from the atmos- <br />phere. P1ost Title V permits now require <br />between 85 and 95 percent cleaning, Ely <br />said. <br />Larry Svoboda, a regional <br />Environmental Protection Agency offi- <br />cial, said he believes that the Craig <br />Power Plant is only cleaning 40 to 50 <br />percent of its pollution. <br />"The state study wasn't well man- <br />aged. It only lasted a year, and we found <br />that whenever we do a study on air pol- <br />lution, the amount of pollution drops for <br />a while," he said. <br />For now, the state, the EPA and the <br />power plant are awaiting results of an <br />independent engineering study to deter- <br />mine what should be done. <br />Tri-State, the principal owner of the <br />plant, has agreed to pay for retrofit for <br />cleaner scrubbers as long as the solution <br />is "economical and reasonable;' Ely said. <br />/1 <br />