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Posts Tagged ‘Petcoke’

The TCEQ ruled today on the air permit for the proposed Las Brisas pet-coke plant in Corpus Christi. The good news is they didn’t grant the permit (yet), instead they remanded the permit back to the State Office of Administrative Hearings on a number of issues. However, they refused to acknowledge some of the most important aspects and requirements of the process (like a case-by-case analysis of the hazardous air pollutants) and practically ignored the recommendations of the administrative law judges and even their own staff – who have all recommended that this permit be denied.

TCEQ should have sent Las Brisas packing – they should have outright denied this joke of a permit, or at the least made them restart the permitting process from square one. Instead we have the same old story from TCEQ. They have shown once more that their primary interest is to allow industries to pollute irresponsibly and not, as it should be, to protect the people and environment of Texas from unnecessary pollution.

The video below is of the press conference held yesterday, which also talked about revisions to water quality standards – another mistake TCEQ is in the process of making. Visit Sierra Club’s website for more on that. Stay tuned to Texas Vox for more info on the Las Brisas case – the video footage of today’s proceedings will be up by tomorrow and will include responses from the protestants in the case including locals from Corpus Christi.

[vimeo 12988286]

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By promoting cleaner energy, cleaner government, and cleaner air for all Texans, we hope to provide for a healthy place to live and prosper. We are Public Citizen Texas

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This week the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality received a recommendation from two administrative judges denying the air permit for the proposed Las Brisas Energy Center in Corpus Christi.  The decision is a ray of hope in the battle to prevent the petcoke plant from showering the citizens of Corpus Christi with harmful pollutants including nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, mercury, and lead.

Set to be built in the Inner Harbor of Corpus Christi, the petroleum coke-fired power plant would cost nearly $3 billion.

Petcoke piles along the ship channel in Corpus Christi

The recommendation was issued following two weeks of testimony and nearly two months of private deliberation between the judges.  Reasons for their decision against the permit were that the company:

  • failed to perform analysis on maximum achievable control technology to be used for its boilers
  • failed to properly account for second emissions
  • failed to properly account for emissions from material handling
  • improperly adjusted the moisture content of the petroleum coke handled at the Port of Corpus Christi in violation of state and federal guidance, resulting in unreliable emissions modeling (more…)

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Las Brisas Storm SurgeIf we look at the distribution of the U.S population, we notice there are huge concentrations along the coasts. I was once told that more than half the population lives within 5 miles of the coasts. With so many people living on the coasts, our population is extremely susceptible to destruction from hurricanes. Recent examples of hurricane damage from Katrina, Rita, and Ike loom large in our collective memories.

Recently I came across a study by Jen Irish, an Assistant Professor of Coastal Engineering at Texas A&M, that looked at how Corpus Christi Bay would fare in the event of a hurricane under the conditions describe in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s future climate scenarios. The study found that if the Scenarios are realized hurricane flood levels could increase 3 to 27% over the next 20 years. This will cause damage to homes from flooding to increase by 60% to 100% in the event of a hurricane.

Corpus Christi is already on very low ground that has been slowly sinking for many years. Corpus’ barrier islands, Mustang and Padre, are also eroding. This study particularly interests us at Public Citizen Texas because Corpus Christi is the proposed site of The Las Brisas Pet Coke Plant, which is a project we have been fighting at Public Citizen since it was proposed.

Pet-coke is an incredibly dirty fuel source that emits large quantities of pollutants into the air. For this very reason, pet-coke plants are generally not built in highly populated areas like Corpus Christi. There is also no reason why a pet-coke plant should be built in Texas when better energy sources are available.

To top off the list of objections, Las Brisas will be located directly in the path of the storm surges predicted in Dr. Irish’s model. The proposed location is on a dredge island in Nueces Bay which is barely above sea level, though the developers have proposed raising it another 13 ft (a measure that will only have a minimal effect in the event of a major hurricane).

The Hurricane Research Team at Colorado has already predicted a that this hurricane season (which started Monday) there is 28 to 30% chance that we will see another major hurricane make landfall. In the past, Corpus Christi has been a vulnerable to hurricanes, and considering the IPCC’s finding that warming will increase hurricanes, the facility could be at great risk.

I fear for the residents of Corpus Christi, but I also can’t help but note the irony of a pet-coke facility being one of the first victims of global warming.

–The Disappointed Environmentalist

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