by Dr. John Bartlit, a REP member who is also active with New Mexico Citizens for Clean Air and Water published in the Los Alamos Monitor on June 10, 2001
A long record of well-put advice and strong evidnce says you can't fool all the people much of the time. Yet efforts to do so still pop up in print.
A new one showed up in the Colorado Country Life Magazine, in a piece titled, "Cleaning up Coal." As usual, the fooling is in the parts left out, mroe than what is said.
The article chanced to reach our little bird on his watch for clean air. In the rambling ways of communication, the Colorado piece passed from a man in Farmington to a clean energy coalition in Santa Fe, who sent it on to New Mexico Citizens for Clean Air and Water for a reply.
All in all, the piece is a story full of holes that help shoot it apart.
I wrote the Farmington man: "The article you sent—"Cleaning up Coal"—does not give enough details to be of any use. For example, it says certain power plants have certain kinds of pollution controls. The key point is the operating efficiency of the controls for reducing emissions."
I explained that systems for removing particulates or sulfur dioxide (SO2) vary greatly in their efficiency. Sulfur controls can capture 50% of the S02 emissions, or 95 percent. The first one will emit 10 times more S)2 than the second. (That is, it emits 50 percent of the total vs. 5 percent of the total.)
On large plants, the difference between 50 and 95 percent cleanup amounts to emitting something like 150 tons a day of S)2 vs. 15 tons a day. These are big differences, and the answer depends on on the control efficiency, not on whether controls exist.
Another porous case is the "black stack" bit. The magazine makes a big point of telling about the "thick, black smoke and dirty, dark power plants" of the old days and how these are now gone. All the rest is untold.
The magazine nmes three pollutants—particulates, S02, and nitrogen oxides (NOX).
It fails to tell that only teh particles cause the "thick, black smoke" out of smokestacvks. S02 is an invisible gas at the stack, although it converts in the air to solid particulates downwind from the stack.
NOX is also a gas and almost invisible at the stack. It has a thin brownish color and it, too, converts to solid particulates downwind from the stack.
Thus, what the eye sees at the stack only relates to how well the particulates are cleaned up. The blackness, or whiteness, at the stack tells nothing about the tonnage of S02 or NOX emitted.
Power plants also emit pollutants that the Colorado article omits—these include mercury and carbon dioxide, which are also invisible.
Mercury is a hazardous material for which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is only beginning to set limits for power plants.
Carbon dioxide is a major contributor to global climate change. Mercury and carbon dioxide are not yet dealt with at any power plant.
The Farmington man asked about the health effects of the large coal plants near him.
I replied: "The queston of health harm is very hard to assess. The plants do not cause levels of particulates, S02, or NOX in the air you breathe to be above the current levels set fo rpublic health (called National Ambient Air Quality Standards)."
The emissions do contribute too much to the regional haze that smogs the West's highly-prized scenic vistas. I sent along my column that discussed the pollutants, health and haze.
The magazine tells it straight about one fact: On some plants, citizen suits drive the cleanup, which other plants do better than the laws through constant work.
Coal use is a huge and growing issue. All our national interests are best served by a debate with meaningful and defensible information.
It is time to have done with trying to pass off some handpicked shards as the whole truth.
