Up to $85 Million For Coal Ash Disposal The Latest In A String Of Red Flags
Contact: Rebecca Kling, rebecca.kling@sierraclub.org
MAPLE GROVE, MN -- Yesterday, the Sierra Club, Clean Up the River Environment (CURE), Dakota Resource Council, and North Dakota Native Vote submitted a report to the Environmental Protection Agency explaining that the cost of bringing Coal Creek into compliance with coal ash storage and disposal requirements if the plant continues to operate is likely to total $35-85 million more than if the plant is retired in 2022 as planned.
Coal ash, the toxic leftovers that remain after burning coal, must be stored properly to prevent the contamination and pollution of soil, groundwater, and wildlife. The analysis found that Great River Energy’s application is incomplete and fundamentally flawed and that in order to continue to operate the plant in compliance with EPA’s Coal Combustion Residuals Rule, the plant owner would need to install a new liner at a cost ranging from $50 million to more than $100 million, or install a cap and groundwater treatment at a cost of $10-15 million if the plant is retired as planned.
The cost of coal ash disposal is the latest in a series of red flags surrounding Great River Energy’s potential sale of Coal Creek. Other concerns include the potential $500 million cost of complying with EPA’s regional haze rule, the increasing difficulty for coal to economically compete with clean energy, and pie-in-the-sky hopes for carbon capture and storage to save Coal Creek.
“How is anyone still seriously considering that Coal Creek should continue to operate?” said Jessica Tritsch, the Senior Campaign Representative with the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal to Clean Energy Campaign in Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota. “The cost of coal ash disposal, plus the cost of complying with the Clean Air Act, plus Great River Energy’s own math saying the plant cannot operate at a profit, just doesn’t add up to an economically viable power plant. Coal Creek can and should be retired and replaced with renewable energy that will be less expensive to operate, safer for the environment and our climate, and just as reliable.”
“Minnesotans have paid hundreds of millions of dollars in unnecessary costs to keep this plant open in the last few years alone,” said Erik Hatlestad, CURE’s Energy Democracy Program Director. “At some point we have to ask if it’s worth it to continue siphoning millions of dollars out of the pockets of working people to protect jobs in a failing industry.”
About the Sierra Club
The Sierra Club is America’s largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization, with more than 3.5 million members and supporters. In addition to protecting every person's right to get outdoors and access the healing power of nature, the Sierra Club works to promote clean energy, safeguard the health of our communities, protect wildlife, and preserve our remaining wild places through grassroots activism, public education, lobbying, and legal action. For more information, visit www.sierraclub.org.
About Clean Up the River Environment (CURE)
CURE is a rural peoples’ organization with offices in Montevideo, Minnesota. CURE’s Energy Democracy Program has been critical of certain rural electric cooperative governance practices and has recently released reports such as The Rural Electric Cooperative Scorecard and Rural Electrification 2.0. With a focus on strategies to impact climate, energy, and environmental justice, the Energy Democracy Program strives to build grassroots community power to address the linkages between environmental challenges, societal inequities, and other systemic challenges facing our communities. For more information, visit www.cureriver.org.
About the Dakota Resource Council
DRC works with communities across the state to organize around common goals of securing a thriving North Dakota and putting people first. Members take action to create public awareness and shape public policy to ensure safe and responsible development, to protect North Dakota’s agricultural economy, and to establish a foundation for a just transition to a diverse energy economy. For more information, visit www.drcinfo.org.
About North Dakota Native Vote
North Dakota Native Vote works to engage tribal members in constructing a representative democracy by working in reservation communities as well as urban areas to create and affect policy and equal representation for the Native people of North Dakota. We foster sustainable, positive social change in our communities through community organizing, mobilization, leadership development, education, civic engagement, and public policy advocacy.
North Dakota Native Vote works to counteract the ongoing colonization of our lands, minds, and bodies by identifying systems that continue to subjugate our communities. We work to learn disparities in civil rights, food systems, energy security/democracy, climate chaos, and policy that disproportionately affects our people and how we interact within and contribute to these systems. For more information, visit www.ndnativevote.org.