Ohio Edison will spend $1.1 billion
to reduce air pollution

WASHINGTON (03/23/05) -- A landmark Clean Air Act case alleging that Ohio Edison Company, a subsidiary of FirstEnergy Corp., violated the New Source Review (NSR) provisions of the Clean Air Act at the W.H. Sammis Station, a coal-fired power plant in Stratton, Ohio, has been settled. The states of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, co-plaintiffs in the federal government’s lawsuit, also join the settlement. 

The consent decree agreed to by Ohio Edison will reduce emissions of harmful sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) from the Sammis plant, as well as from other Ohio Edison and FirstEnergy coal-fired power plants, by over 212,000 tons per year. The pollution controls and other measures required by the consent decree are expected to cost approximately $1.1 billion. 

The settlement resolves a lawsuit filed in 1999 as part of a federal government initiative, joined by the states of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, to bring operators of coal-fired power plants into compliance with the NSR provisions of the Clean Air Act. The Sammis Station is one of the largest sources of air pollution in the nation, emitting a total of about 205,000 tons of SO2 and NOx in 2003. After a four-week trial in 2003, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio agreed with the government that there were NSR violations at the Sammis plant. The court had not yet held the second trial needed to determine what pollution controls, penalty and other remedies would be required for these violations. The settlement resolves the remedy phase of this litigation, thereby averting a trial. 

The consent decree will reduce SO2 and NOx emissions from the Sammis Station by a total of 134,500 tons of SO2 and 28,567 tons of NOx per year. Pollution controls will be installed at all seven of the Sammis steam-generating units, and a plant-wide cap will be imposed on SO2 and NOx emissions. The two largest units, which account for over half the plant’s pollutant emissions, will receive state-of-the-art pollution controls known as flue gas desulfurization devices (scrubbers), which reduce SO2 emissions by at least 95 percent, and selective catalytic reduction (SCR) devices, which reduce NOx emissions by at least 90 percent. Pollution controls will be installed between 2005 and 2011. The final plant-wide caps and emission reduction levels will be achieved in 2012. 

Ohio Edison and FirstEnergy will provide over 49,000 tons per year of additional reductions in SO2 and NOx emissions from three other power plants: the Burger plant in Belmont County, Ohio; the Mansfield plant in Beaver County, Pa.; and the Eastlake plant in Eastlake, Ohio. These additional reductions will be achieved by upgrading existing pollution controls or installing new pollution controls at these plants. These additional reductions will bring the total SO2 and NOx emission reductions under the consent decree to over 212,000 tons per year by 2012. 

This is the ninth settlement that the federal government has entered into to address Clean Air Act NSR violations by coal-fired power plants. 

The proposed consent decree will be lodged with the United States District Court in Columbus, Ohio for a thirty-day public comment period.