The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has reached an agreement with environmental groups that will require 10 coal-fired power plants to obtain new water pollution permits with lower limits for toxic releases into streams, Kallanish Energy reports.
The five-page settlement, filed last week in Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court, involves power plants that have been operating with expired water pollution permits for years, officials said.
The settlement will help insure drinking water is not impacted by arsenic, boron, bromides, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury and selenium from power plant discharges.
The power plants are Cheswick Generating Station, Brunner island, Montour Steam Electric Station, Keystone Generating Station, Ebensburg Power, Conemaugh Generating Station, Homer City Generating Station, Cambria Cogen, Bruce Mansfield Generating Station and the Colver Power Plant.
DEP agreed to a schedule to update and draft new water permits for the 10 plants and to finalize all the permits by March 2019.
“This settlement is a step in the right direction for Pennsylvania streams and public health,” said PennFuture spokesman George Jugavic Jr. in a statement.
Last June, the Sierra Club, PennFuture and the Lower Susquehanna Riverkeeper Association sued DEP for allowing the power plants to operate with expired National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permits that specify limits on discharges to streams.
Such permits are to be updated every five years under federal rules and are to updated as technologies improve.
The suit asked DEP to re-issue new permits that included newer guidelines published in 2016 by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.