Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Coal combustion produces smog, soot, acid rain, the neurotoxin mercury, and is the largest single source of carbon dioxide emissions, a leading cause of global warming. ELPC works throughout the Midwest to clean up old, dirty coal plants and prevent the building of unnecessary new plants. Our current includes:
Chicago’s Fisk and Crawford Coal Plants
Michigan’s Wolverine Coal Plant
Kentucky’s Trimble, Cash Creek and NewGas Coal Plants
Chicago’s Fisk & Crawford Coal Plants
In Chicago, a team of ELPC’s attorneys, policy advocates, and communications experts is working with the Chicago Clean Power Coalition to clean up or shut down the old, dirty Fisk and Crawford coal plants located in the city’s Pilsen and Little Village neighborhoods, respectively.
ELPC’s and the Coalition’s work includes advocacy for the passage of a City ordinance that would significantly reduce soot and greenhouse gas pollution from Chicago’s coal plants. The Clean Power Ordinance would make Chicago the first city in the nation to regulate pollution from coal plants.
The Ordinance was introduced in July 2011 with enough votes to pass City Council. It now has 35 co-sponsors (26 are required for passage) and is supported by majority of the City Council, including 9 newly elected aldermen. In addition to the cosponsors, the ordinance is backed by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and a grassroots campaign of nearly 60 community, health, labor and environmental groups from across the city.
Michigan’s Wolverine Coal Plant
In Michigan, ELPC is lead counsel for a coalition that opposes the proposed new 600-megawatt Wolverine coal plant in the picturesque fishing town of Rogers City. Our work has included massive, coordinated statewide efforts to document legal deficiencies with 8 coal plants proposed in the state as well as more robust legal challenge of the Wolverine plant in particular.
The coalition scored a major victory when former Governor Jennifer Granholm and the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment (DNRE) Director Rebecca Humphries denied a permit needed to build the controversial plant. But a state court overturned that decision, and the state agency issued the air permit to Wolverine in June 2011. ELPC is now preparing to appeal that permit.
Kentucky’s Cash Creek and NewGas Coal Plants
ELPC represents the Kentucky Chapter of the Sierra Club and other local groups in legal challenges to air permits issues to two coal-to-synthetic natural gas plants, Cash Creek and Kentucky NewGas. Currently, ELPC’s appeals of the plants’ Clean Air Act Title V operating permits are in the Kentucky state court system. ELPC has also petitioned the U.S. EPA to object to the permits.
Recent Highlights
Tags: Cash Creek, Clean air, Clean Air Act, Coal, Coal Plants, Crawford, Fisk, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Natural Gas, NewGas, Trimble, Wolverine
