Coal Plant Ranked as Nation’s Dirtiest Asks for Pollution Exemption

The nation’s most polluting coal-burning energy plant has requested President Trump to exempt it from stricter limits on hazardous air air pollution after the administration just lately invited corporations to use for presidential air pollution waivers by electronic mail.

The getting older Colstrip energy plant in Colstrip, Mont., emits extra dangerous tremendous particulate matter air pollution, or soot, than another energy plant within the nation, Environmental Safety Company figures present. A brand new rule adopted by the Biden administration in 2023 would have compelled the power — the one coal plant within the nation to lack trendy air pollution controls — to put in new gear.

Now, the Colstrip plant has utilized for a two-year exemption to these guidelines, based on Montana’s congressional delegation, which backed the request.

The brand new air pollution customary “endangers the financial viability of the plant, which if closed, would undermine the area’s electrical grid,” Senator Steve Daines and different members of the delegation wrote in a letter despatched on Monday to the E.P.A. administrator, Lee Zeldin. “With out Colstrip, customers would bear the burden of upper vitality prices and grid unreliability, and its closure would stymie financial growth within the area.”

Well being specialists famous that the letter didn’t deal with the well being results of the tremendous air pollution particles. Quite a few research have proven the particles are sufficiently small to penetrate deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream, the place they’ll journey to the guts and different organs, growing mortality from cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses.

A 2023 examine confirmed that coal-burning energy stations, specifically, emit tremendous particulates containing sulfur dioxide linked with greater mortality than different forms of air pollution.

This air pollution “could be very damaging to younger children specifically, who’ve growing lungs,” mentioned Robert Service provider, a pulmonologist in Billings, Mont. The delegation’s letter, he mentioned, reveals “a whole indifference to the well being harms.”

The Colstrip plant’s request for an exemption from stricter air pollution guidelines got here after the E.P.A. instructed corporations final month that they may apply for waivers to main clean-air guidelines by emailing the company. The E.P.A. pointed to a bit of the Clear Air Act that permits the president to quickly exempt industrial amenities from new guidelines if the know-how required to fulfill these guidelines isn’t accessible, and if it’s within the curiosity of nationwide safety.

The Trump administration has additionally introduced its intention to roll again a slew of guidelines solely, which might ultimately imply that crops just like the one in Colstrip wouldn’t have to fulfill new air pollution requirements in any respect.

The transfer was a part of a wider effort by Mr. Zeldin to steer the company away from its authentic position of environmental safety and regulation and towards making vitality and vehicles extra inexpensive.

NorthWestern Power Group and Talen Power, which function the plant together with different minority house owners, didn’t instantly reply to remark.

Any exemption granted by the Trump administration is more likely to face authorized challenges from environmental teams. In drawing up the brand new guidelines, the Biden administration had recognized know-how already accessible that might permit the Colstrip facility to fulfill stricter requirements, and that had been extensively adopted by different coal crops within the nation.

The Biden administration additionally estimated that the brand new air pollution management know-how would value far much less to put in than the $500 million the Colstrip plant has mentioned it might take.

“These applied sciences can be found,” mentioned Amanda Levin, director of coverage evaluation on the Pure Sources Protection Council, an environmental advocacy group, “however Colstrip determined to not make investments when each different coal plant within the nation did.”