Inside the coal power plant

Inside the Crawford plant in Chicago, after we made it through security (which took ages), they gave us lunch ( pizza and soda), a lecture, and a tour. The plant-folks seemed a little anxious. UCS isn’t exactly Greenpeace, but it is an environmental organization. And the Crawford Plant, owned by Midwest Generation, has been in the news in the past few years for spewing deadly toxins into the Chicago air and increasing the risk and incidence rate of asthma. Because the Crawford plant is old (built in 1924), it has been exempt from the more rigorous clean air regulations. The EPA has cited the plant for violations in the recent past—for pumping out emissions with more soot and particulates than the law allows.

The Crawford speakers gave us a tidy power point presentation. (I think it was tidy, but I almost fell asleep when they got into the history and some of the more extensive scientific explanations of its operations.) They explained that they were working hard to clean up their operation. They talked about their control technologies for reducing toxic emissions such as mercury, nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide, claiming that their emissions of the latter are below state and federal limits. They also made of point of saying they import their coal Wyoming because it’s lower sulfur coal. Only the cleanest coal, I guess. No Midwest coal there.

It sounded good, but I have trouble thinking of clean and coal in the same sentence. And I’m terrible at statistics. Statistics do something to my brain. I never know what they mean. And my brain just goes around and around the numbers. For example, one man there mentioned they had a 30% reduction of nitrogen oxide emissions. Compared to what? What is the starting point? What would a new coal plant emit? And how much nitrogen oxide do we really want to inhale? Or mercury? Or sulfur dioxide?

All the same, I was really impressed with how nice the men there were. I mean, they seemed to love their job at the plant. And they loved chatting it up.

Just a spoonful of sugar makes the toxins sound fine.

At the end of the presentation they had a display of their community projects and prizes. One was a green award. When someone asked why they got an environmental award, they said they thought it was for planting trees in a park.