TVA touts $300 million scrubber for coal plant
The Bull Run Fossil Plant, which generates enough electricity to light the homes of Chattanooga and Knoxville combined, is getting a scrubber control system that is expected to remove more than 90 percent of its sulfur dioxide emissions when it goes into operation in 2009.
Sulfur dioxide leads to acid rain that kills plants and acidifies mountain streams, and regional haze that reduces scenic views in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, some 30 miles away on the Tennessee-North Carolina border.
“TVA is keeping its word. TVA is doing its part for air quality,” said TVA Director Bill Baker, wearing a Friends of the Smokies shirt. “We know that we have a huge responsibility in this area. We have made some major commitments and we are putting our money where our mouth is.”
Aided by a $365 million-a-year rate increase in 2003, TVA will spend a total of $5.6 billion on clean air improvements to its 11 coal plants by the end of the decade. Already, TVA has met a goal of a 70 percent reduction in nitrogen oxide emissions, which lead to smog and breathing problems for the young and old. And TVA is on schedule to cut sulfur emissions by 85 percent by 2010, Baxter said.
Fifty-eight of TVA’s 59 coal-fired boilers now have some form of pollution controls. Twenty of the biggest boilers, representing 60 percent of TVA’s capacity, have state-of-the-art selective catalytic converters to reduce nitrogen, including Bull Run and Kingston, about 40 miles from the Smokies.
TVA, which provides electricity to about 8.5 million consumers in Tennessee and parts of Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, Virginia and Georgia, gets about 60 percent of its power from coal.
The nation’s largest public utility installed its first two scrubbers in the late 1970s at Widows Creek station in Alabama. Two more were built at the Paradise station in Kentucky in the 1980s. Another two were added in the 1990s at the Cumberland station in Middle Tennessee.
A third scrubber for Paradise is now under construction, the Bull Run scrubber construction will start soon and groundbreaking is expected for two scrubbers at Kingston in 2006 and 2007.
“It is a significant investment,” said Jim Fyke, Tennessee commissioner of environment and conservation. “But it will yield significant public health benefits for the residents of Tennessee and beyond.”
Jim Renfro, air quality specialist for the Smokies, said improvements have been seen in the national park’s air quality since the late 1990s. Though the park still suffers some of the highest levels of air pollution in the country, the Smokies last summer enjoyed its cleanest ozone season on record.
“A lot of the improvements are due to weather, but as emissions come down air quality is going to get better,” he said. “The future prognosis is good.”
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