Alexandria won a partial victory in its years-long battle with the Mirant power plant Thursday when a state panel ruled the plant must regulate a type of pollution that is particularly harmful to humans.
A permit drafted by the state Department of Environmental Quality would have allowed the Alexandria coal-fired plant to merge its five smokestacks into two without regulating the emissions of a type of fine particulate matter — called PM 2.5 — that has been linked to asthma and heart disease in humans.
Mirant has said that merging its smokestacks would help the environment because the emissions would move faster, shoot higher into the air and disperse better.
Alexandria officials have said that without PM 2.5 caps, the project would lead to higher production and more pollution.
The State Air Pollution Control Board, an independent body that must approve Department of Environmental Quality permits, decided not to issue the permit without including an emissions limit.
“It’s pretty clear that we can’t issue a permit without filling in the number for the 2.5 emissions,” board member Bruce Buckheit said. “The law does seem to require it.”
Virginia law requires that PM 2.5 levels in the state comply with limits set by the Environmental Protection Agency’s National Ambient Air Quality Standards.
“We think this is a step in the right direction,” Alexandria Department of Transportation and Environmental Quality chief Bill Skrabak said about the board’s deferral of the permit. “We believe it was a win.”
The board now must determine how to measure what an acceptable emissions limit is for the plant — another bone of contention between Alexandria and Mirant.
Alexandria’s consultants have used high-tech modeling software to measure the plant’s emissions and found staggeringly high levels.
Mirant has placed emissions monitors at two locations around the plant and found levels that are within federal limits.
Mirant said Alexandria was not using the city’s modeling software — which is the same kind that has been used by Connecticut and New Jersey to set emissions limits in those states — properly.
Alexandria said Mirant’s emissions monitors were not placed in areas with the worst pollution levels.
