BPU made aware of violations

In documents issued earlier this week, the United States Environmental Protection Agency told the Kansas City Board of Public Utilities that its two power plants violate portions of the Clean Air Act.

The letter, addressed to BPU Board of Directors President Loretta Colombel via the Unified Government, was issued by Becky Weber, director of the Air and Waste Management Division at the EPA’s Region 7 headquarters, located just a few hundred yards from BPU’s administrative building in downtown Kansas City, Kan.

The notice alleges the BPU violated a number of provisions of the Clean Air Act:

• Attempts to fix tube leaks and boiler tube replacements at the two coal-fired units at the Quindaro Power Station – the fixes were designed to bring the units back to near-maximum operating capacity – constituted “major modification(s) that resulted in a significant net emissions increase of one or more regulated pollutants.”

• An attempt to fix tube leaks at the single coal-fired unit at Nearman Creek Power Station, as well as a 1994 superheater tube replacement, boiler tubing projects in 1999 and 2002 and 2006 boiler improvements also represented “significant modifactions.”

In each case, the “major modifications” would have required BPU officials to obtain “prevention of significant deterioration” permits and authorization from the Kansas State Implementation Plan. The EPA also alleges in the notice that utility officials failed to install “best available control technology,” in any of the modification projects.

“These violations will continue until the Unified Government complies with the Clean Air Act Requirements and installs and operates ‘BACT,’” the notice states. “These violations of the CAA and the Kansas SIP have resulted in the release of significant quantities of (sulfur dioxide), (nitrogen oxide) and (particulate matter) into the environment.

“Until these violations are corrected, Units 1 and 2 at the Quindaro Power Station and Unit 1 at the Nearman Creek Power Station will continue to release significant illegal quantities…into the environment.”

“The BPU has received a notice of violation from the EPA regarding certain alleged Clean Air Act violations,” BPU spokesman Joe Dick confirmed Friday. “This is a legal matter and the BPU is evaluating the notice and developing its response.

“The BPU believes it has operated in compliance with the law and will continue to work in partnership with the air regulatory agencies to resolve concerns raised in the notice.”

The notice gives BPU and UG officials – the BPU is an ‘administrative agency’ of the UG – 10 days to form a response. Even if the BPU chooses to do so, such an action wouldn’t prevent the EPA from enforcing any penalties or fines as a result of the violations.

Dick says that the response is one of the options the BPU is considering.

Utility officials have had knowledge those past projects may have been completed in violation of EPA regulations.

In a November 2004 confidential report by Stinson, Morrison and Hecker, a Kansas City, Mo., law firm, Stanley A. Reigel, the report’s author, concluded that of 73 projects undertaken by the BPU, identified 15 projects that would likely come under scrutiny by the EPA, though according to the Kansas City Kansan’s copy of the report, the specific projects were not mentioned in the report.

In a separate report by Burns and McDonnell Engineers cited by Reigel’s report, the engineering firm estimated in 2004 that at least $160 million would be needed to upgrade the BPU’s system to incorporate best available technology.

Reigel’s report concludes that “the presence of a single “questionable’ or ‘probably not defensible’ project puts BPU at risk for an (New Source Review) enforcement action by the EPA, Kansas or a citizens’ group which might affect the unit on which the project was performed, resulting in demands that the unit be retrofitted with BACT and that BPU pay penalties consistent with prior settlements.”

A final footnote in the report estimates that prior settlements reached between the EPA and violating utilities, in 2004, averaged roughly $1,000 per coal-fired megawatt.

If a similar standard where used in assessing fines to the utility, the BPU could face millions in fines, and be forced into expensive upgrades to its power plants.