An Ohio company will pay $1.1 billion in fines and cleanup costs at four power plants in the second-largest federal settlement with an electric utility over air pollution.
The case, filed in 1999 against FirstEnergy Corp.'s W.H. Sammis plant north of Steubenville, Ohio, was the first involving dozens of Midwest plants to go to trial over accusations that the plants spewed dirty air that caused smog and health problems in the Northeast.
This FirstEnergy Corp. plant in Eastlake, Ohio, is one of the plants that figured in the settlement with the Environmental Protection Agency and others.
(John Quinn -- Bloomberg News)
|
|
A federal judge in Columbus, Ohio, ruled in August 2003 after a three-week trial that Akron, Ohio-based FirstEnergy had violated the Clean Air Act by making physical changes at its coal-fired plant without upgrading pollution controls.
Yesterday's agreement involved the Environmental Protection Agency, the Justice Department, and New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.
"This is a great result for the health of all the people who live downwind from this power plant and for the environment of the Northeast," Assistant U.S. Attorney General Thomas L. Sansonetti said.
The agreement -- which must be approved by U.S. District Judge Edmund A. Sargus Jr. in Columbus -- would lead to an annual reduction of 212,000 tons of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, emissions blamed for acid rain and health-damaging soot and smog.
One of the largest reductions in emissions ever ordered, it represents about 80 percent of the pollutants coming out of the Sammis plant, which must install pollution controls on all seven of its units by 2012, EPA acting Assistant Administrator Thomas V. Skinner said.
Additional reductions would be achieved by installing pollution controls at two other FirstEnergy plants in Shadyside and Eastlake. Sulfur dioxide scrubbers will be updated at the company's Shippingport, Pa., plant.
The settlement also includes $8.5 million in civil penalties, the second-highest ever.
