Jersey
City
– State environmental groups gathered today to call on PSEG’s Chairman Ralph Izzo
to make a public commitment to clean up his company’s dirty coal plant, the
Hudson Generating Station, during its Global Green Expo this weekend. The
groups issued the call via letter to Ralph Izzo at PSEG’s Newark headquarters last night. The Hudson Generating
Station, located just a few miles from Liberty State Park where the Expo will be held, is one
of the Northeast’s oldest and dirtiest coal plants.
“A cloud of
dirty smog hangs over their Global Green event,” said Dena Mottola Jaborska,
executive director of Environment New Jersey. “The Hudson Generating
station is one of the dirtiest coal-fired power plants in the Northeast. If
PSEG is serious about protecting the environment and tackling global warming,
then Chairman Izzo should announce immediate clean up plans for the plant at
the Global Green Expo this weekend.”
“We are here to expose
the Green Expo,” said Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club. “As long as
PSE&G allows its coal plants to continue to add to our air pollution and
global warming, they will never be really green.
The Hudson Generating Station is one
of the dirtiest power plants in the Northeast. Out of the 50 dirtiest
power plants in the Northeast, the Hudson plant ranks:
· 2nd for nitrous oxide
emissions that
contribute to smog. During high smog days, otherwise healthy people who
exercise can’t breathe normally, and the elderly and sick must stay in doors.
Children exposed to smog develop lungs with less flexibility and capacity than
normal. Over time, smog exposure can lead to asthma, bronchitis, emphysema, and
other respiratory problems.
¨ 10th for sulfur dioxide
emissions that form
soot. When sulfur dioxide contacts water in the air, acid rain is formed, which
damages forests, lakes, streams and whole ecosystems. When inhaled by humans,
these particles become lodged deep in the lungs where they that cause a variety
of health problems, including asthma, bronchitis, lung cancer and heart
attacks.
¨ 13th for carbon dioxide
emissions that
contribute to global warming.
In
addition, the plant is a leading emitter of mercury, a neurotoxin that is
particularly damaging to the developing brain, and linked to learning
disabilities, developmental delays and problems with fine motor coordination in
children. In addition, mercury from coal plants is making the fish in our
rivers, lakes and streams unsafe to eat.
“PSE&G’s Hudson Generating
Station, just a few miles upstream from PSE&G’s Expo, is a public health
danger, and we’re all breathing its pollution now as will Expo
visitors this weekend,” said
David Pringle, campaign director of the New Jersey Environmental Federation
(NJEF). “If PSE&G is to be the leader it says it wants to
be, it needs to clean up, not cover up.”
PSEG has repeatedly petitioned the
state and federal government to delay the Hudson plant’s mandated pollution cleanup
schedule. “The company’s success at winning these delays comes at a large cost
to New Jerseyans who breathe the pollution from that plant and who will suffer
the consequences of global warming to which the plant contributes,” said
Mottola Jaborska of Environment New Jersey.
In 2007, the NJDEP and USEPA
renegotiated the terms of a previous agreement with PSEG that mandated PSEG
clean up the Hudson Generating Station. Under the new agreement, PSEG will not
install pollution control technology on the Hudson Generating Station until
2010.
This is four years later than a 2002
agreement with USEPA and NJDEP that required controls for particulate matter
and sulfur dioxide, and three years later than the agreement would have
mandated controls on nitrous oxide. In addition, eight years ago, PSEG agreed
to install up-to-date controls for mercury emissions, but the company has
delayed that action until 2010, even though the DEP required other New Jersey companies to install mercury
controls three years ago.
“Given
the high levels of air pollution in the area around the Hudson Generating
Station, and in New Jersey in
general, PSEG never should have sought these delays, and the state and
federal government should not have granted them,” said NJEF’s Pringle.
The letter
to Ralph Izzo concludes: “Thousands of New Jerseyans will be celebrating Earth
Day at the PSEG Global Green Expo just a few miles from the Hudson plant. Your announcement to
the attendees that you will be cleaning up the Hudson Generation Station without
delay would be a true cause for celebration.”
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