LOCAL

Environment top concern at DTE plant hearing

Jackie Smith
Times Herald
A public hearing over a permit from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality for DTE Energy's proposed $1 billion natural-gas plant garnered a small crowd on Monday, June 18, 2018, at the East China Schools' administrative building.

Environmental concerns dominated a public hearing Monday over a state air quality permit for DTE Energy’s proposed $1 billion natural gas-powered plant in East China Township.

Although the plant would replace the nearby St. Clair Power Plant and two other coal-fired facilities, nearly all of those who spoke at the hearing were opposed the plant for air quality reasons.

“I just came to say I hope the permit doesn’t go through,” said Marysville resident Judy Lindberg. “I believe, we need to protect our air for the aging population and our young children, and I don’t believe proper consideration was given.”

Officials with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality fielded questions about the plant proposed for construction and operation at 4505 King Road before the hearing.

Lindberg asked why DTE needed “such a huge plant.”

“This seems like this is overkill,” she said. “Could you have half the emissions with half (the size of plant)?”

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The Michigan Public Service Commission has already approved the power plant. Permit engineer John Vial said getting into plant overall wasn't the MDEQ air quality division's role.

He told attendees the new 1,150-megawatt plant would include two natural-gas-fired turbines, two heat recovery steam generators, an auxiliary boiler, an emergency engine, a fire pump engine, and supporting equipment. 

Potential emissions from the proposed plant were a consistent point of contention Monday. Several people said the plant would disperse more sulfur dioxide in an area already noted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to be out of compliance for its levels.

The MDEQ’s air quality division has two air monitoring stations in St. Clair County that measure air pollutants, including sulfur dioxide, ozone and other trace metals.

Jim Haywood, the division’s dispersion modeler, said because the agency does not have monitors everywhere, it uses virtual monitoring points, inputting data from “fairly large facilities, measuring over 10,000 pounds” of sulfur dioxide per year, for example, into a computer model.

If the computer model predicts a violation, he said the EPA will designate a region as a “non-attainment” area. Such was the case for St. Clair County in 2016 for sulfur dioxide and in May this year for ozone.

“That’s the situation we had here,” Haywood said of just sulfur dioxide. “The monitor that we had up in Port Huron did not show a violation, but when we put the emissions from the Belle River and St. Clair (plants) in there, it did show a violation. Now to clarify that, the reason we did (have) a violation was not the Belle River (plant). Belle River alone put into the model, it would not have shown a violation. It was the St. Clair Plant, being the older and the dirtier of the two plants, that caused the violation.”

But Haywood said the MDEQ believes that once the St. Clair plant is shut down the county will come back into compliance.

“DTE, what they have done is they’ve put up a monitor where we showed there was a hotspot. Right now, it’s still showing clean,” he said. “It’s only been up for a year, and basically, we need three years’ worth of data.”

After three years, Haywood said, the EPA will take another look at the county's air quality status.

According to the DEQ, three-year averages of sulfur dioxide before 2015 were near the National Ambient Air Quality Standards' level of around 70 parts per billion. Since then, they've shown averages closer to 60.

DEQ officials said they didn’t believe DTE’s new project would contribute significantly to the sulfur dioxide issue.

Environmental advocates at the hearing said that was disingenuous.

“Sulfur dioxide is an incredibly harmful gas. So, it feels a little bit like you’re downplaying the impact of the non-attainment area,” said Charlotte Jameson, energy policy and legislative affairs director for the Michigan Environmental Council. “But my question is that in addition to doing all this modeling and figuring out where the non-attainment area (is going), the state also has to submit an implementation plan and the DEQ was supposed to do that in March of 2018. And it has yet to do that, and here we are considering permitting another major source on top of the other major sources that are already here.”

Haywood said the state’s plan was still “a work in progress.” He said the delay was related to working with all the facilities involved to “come up with a plan they can live with that also gets air quality back into attainment again.”

Andrew Sarpolis, with the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, said smokestacks are not the only issue with the natural gas-powered plant.

“They’re not considering extraction, they’re not considering transportation,” he said. “These are not the climate panaceas these are (said) to be.”

No DTE officials spoke during Monday’s discussion. But in a statement later that night, spokesman Brian Corbett said the new plant will use “best-available emissions control technology to deliver cleaner, reliable and affordable power for 850,000 homes beginning in 2022.”

“It is one of many steps DTE is taking to reduce carbon emissions by 30 percent by the early 2020s and more than 80 percent by 2050 by using significantly more renewable energy and transitioning 24/7 energy sources from coal-fired plants to lower-emission natural gas,” he said.

“Compared with the average annual emissions from the three coal-fired power plants DTE plans to retire in the next five years, DTE’s natural gas-fueled plant in East China Township is projected to significantly reduce air emissions, including carbon dioxide by more than 60 percent, sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxide by approximately 99 percent and particulate matter by over 80 percent.”

DTE officials said the new plant is scheduled to break ground later this year and will create at least $200 million in business with Michigan-based companies, as well as roughly 500 local construction jobs.

Mary Ann Dolehanty, acting director of the MDEQ’s air quality division, said there wasn’t an official timeline for reaching a decision about DTE’s permit, depending on what issues the agency may need to investigate further.

But she estimated two to four weeks.

Contact Jackie Smith at (810) 989-6270 or jssmith@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @Jackie20Smith.