Mirant power company’s lawsuit is no surprise, according to an attorney working with the city to reduce emissions from the coal-burning Alexandria plant.
“They left the meeting in a huff,” John Britton said of the Mirant officials at a May 23 Virginia Air Pollution Control Board meeting.
Mirant sued the air board late last week over the temporary permit the board issued the plant. The city lauded the new permit, which sets strict limits on the amount of sulfur dioxide the plant can release into the air from its plant along the Potomac River just north of the heart of Old Town. The new permit will take effect around July 1.
Mirant wanted the air board to accept a set of regulations it created with Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality. These limits would have better protected the environment because they controlled more than one type of emission, said Debra Bolton, vice president and assistant general counsel for Mirant.
But Britton said regulating the sulfur dioxide level alone limits the overall amount of pollution the plant can release. Sulfur dioxide is also one of the more dangerous pollutants to people’s health that the plant emits, he said.
The board’s decision is not “backed by the science and expertise” of the environmental quality department, Bolton said. Last week, when the five-member air board voted 3-2 for the sulfur dioxide regulating permit, the two opposing members said the board should bow to the departmental staff’s technical knowledge.
Mirant’s lawsuit also takes issue with the board requiring the department to issue the permits. In most cases, the board delegates its permitting authority to the environmental quality department, spokesman Bill Hayden said. The board retains the authority to issue permits itself, he said.
The sulfur dioxide limits are arbitrarily low, both a hardship to the company and not based on data, Bolton said.
Air board member Vivian Thompson, who voted for the limits, said last week the board spent many hours considering plenty of data.
“It was a thoroughly researched decision, ” Thompson said Friday. “We looked at the facts and figures over many months.”
