Coal Blooded: Putting Profits Before People

Emissions Controls or Decommissioning?However, while outside of the scope of this report, an additional consideration should bewhether a given plant has controls against the emission of mercury and other toxins. While SO 2and NO X are the focus in this report, it should be apparent that churning out mercury intowaterways in a densely-populated urban environment is extremely harmful, particularly givenhigh rates of subsistence fishing that occurs in some areas. Thus, it is somewhat astoundingthat until recently, there has been no federal limit for toxins such as mercury,arsenic, chromium, and acid gases from coal-fired power plants in the U.S. Whilethere are mercury regulations now in place to target municipal and medical waste incinerators,coal plants have not yet been subjected to these regulations. Fortunately, in March 2011, theU.S. EPA proposed new standards for the regulation of these toxins from coal- and oil-firedpower plants, which will reduce mercury emissions from these plants by 91 percent. 114 TheMercury and Air Toxics Rule for Power Plants were finalized in February 2012 (See Appendix 4for a Review of the Policy Landscape).While emissions controls certainly make a coal plant less hazardous, they do not make it“clean.” Because SO 2 and NO X emissions are two of the five factors by which plants are rankedin the report, one might assume that plants with lower environmental justice performancegrades tend not to have SO 2 and NO X emissions controls, and that plants with higher grades dotend to have SO 2 and NO X emissions controls. However, comparisons between plants’Page | 45