Dec 5 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Paul Wilson The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio

American Municipal Power-Ohio's proposed coal-fired plant in Meigs County does not meet Clean Air Act standards and should not be built, two environmental groups said Monday.

Columbus-based AMP disputed those assertions and said its planned Letart Falls operation would use "state-of-the-art technology to control emissions," meeting Clean Air Act standards.

Nonprofit AMP-Ohio wants to build a $2.5 billion plant to serve customers in Cleveland, Jackson, Prospect and 75 other Ohio communities. It would be the first coal-fired operation built in Ohio in years, and AMP has said that it will be one of the cleanest in the nation.

But Shannon Fisk, staff attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said AMP-Ohio plans to build an "outdated and dirty coal plant." The group, along with the Ohio Environmental Council, filed concerns with the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency on Friday.

That was the deadline for comment on AMP-Ohio's draft air-pollution permit. Attorneys general from the District of Columbia, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont also wrote Ohio officials to oppose the plant.

"With a lifetime of more than 50 years, this plant, if built as proposed, might well emit more than 400 million tons of (carbon dioxide) in total, thus significantly contributing to the public health and environmental damage associated with global warming," the attorneys general said in their letter.

About 200 comments were filed with the state EPA about the plant. It could take several months for agency officials to review the comments before making a recommendation to EPA leadership.

AMP-Ohio said it will use technology that reduces emissions of sulfur dioxide, mercury and small particles. The system is called Powerspan ECO, but AMP did not include details about it in its permit application, causing the environmental groups to question whether it actually will be used.

AMP-Ohio is committed to the system, said Kent Carson, company spokesman.

"When we filed the permit, (we) left it open in terms of the technology," he said. "Since that time, our board of trustees has committed to the use of Powerspan."

The environmental groups would like AMP-Ohio to use other power sources and energy-efficiency measures to keep up with increasing demand for electricity. But if the company is set on coal, Powerspan isn't the best way to use it, the groups said.

The plant would "subject people in the Ohio Valley to even more of the pollutants that can trigger asthma attacks, lost work and early death," the environmental council said. The group would prefer that AMP-Ohio employ technology similar to what American Electric Power is planning for a separate Meigs County plant, which turns coal into a gas that's then burned to make electricity.

AMP-Ohio and the environmental groups disagree on whether that technology is further ahead of what would be used in Letart Falls. Carson said the system AMP-Ohio is proposing shows promise for capturing carbon dioxide economically.

The plan for the plant has support in Meigs County because it would create jobs and bring investment money to one of the state's poorest areas. About 100 people would work at the plant and more than 150 jobs could be created elsewhere to support the plant, Meigs County officials have said.

But under the current plan, it's not a fair trade, the environmental groups said.

"We do want jobs for southeast Ohio," said Nolan Moser of the Ohio Environmental Council. "We just want the cleanest plant available. We know definitively that AMP has not chosen the cleanest plant available."

paul.wilson@dispatch.com