Connecticut Attorney General Announces Landmark Settlement With AEP, One Of Nation's Largest Polluters

October 9, 2007 -- Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal today announced a landmark settlement requiring one of the nation's largest power plant operators to install $4.6 billion worth of pollution controls and invest $60 million in environmental projects - significantly reducing harmful pollution.

Blumenthal - joined by seven other states, the federal government and environmental groups - sued Ohio-based American Electric Power (AEP) nearly eight years ago under the Clean Air Act for failing to control harmful pollution emitted by coal-fired power plants across the Mid-West and South. Blumenthal filed the suit on behalf of the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).

For decades the pollution has carried into the Northeast, contaminating air in Connecticut and the Northeast. These emissions contribute to serious health complications - including respiratory ailments, asthma and death.

The settlement requires considerable pollution controls - particularly for sulfur oxides and nitrogen oxides, some of the most harmful pollutants, Blumenthal said.

Gov. M. Jodi Rell said, "The bottom line is that pollution from Midwestern power generators has been damaging Connecticut's air quality for decades. Their pollution becomes our pollution because it is carried here by prevailing wind patterns. The pollution that blows into our state also undermines our efforts to reduce in-state sources of pollution, because AEP is by far the largest power plant operator in the nation and its emissions dwarf all others."

Blumenthal said, "This step is monumental - meaning much less smog and acid rain, much less asthma and respiratory disease, and much healthier air," Blumenthal said. "Our enforcement action compels AEP to cut pollutants by at least 70 percent over the next decade - setting a new paradigm and raising the bar for clean air cases pending and others to come. This settlement is hugely significant not only for its size - the largest in history - but its signal that clean air enforcement is alive and well, despite the Bush Administration's efforts to gut the law."

Rell said, "The settlement dollars will fund initiatives that directly benefit our air quality -- like programs to reduce diesel emissions and to retrofit school buses. We will put this money to good use in our continuing effort to make certain we provide the people of Connecticut with a safe, clean and healthy environment."

Blumenthal said, "We stopped the Bush Administration's campaign to eviscerate the New Source Review standard. Now we're compelling this company to follow that standard. AEP's pollution would have been lawful under the standard sought by George Bush's EPA, which we successfully fought and defeated.

"Today's historic victory promises cleaner air and quality of life for countless generations - effectively achieving the emissions equivalence of removing 35 times all the emissions from Connecticut's power plants. This agreement cuts pollution at AEP's entire power plant system.

"We are stopping AEP's filthy coal-fired power plants from illegally spewing millions of tons of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide. Connecticut could have ceased all air pollution from within the state, but still fail to meet federal air quality standards because of the 'second-hand' pollution delivered here by downwind states."

The lawsuit settled today involves 16 coal-fired power plants in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Virginia that are owned and operated by AEP. Specifically, AEP allegedly made major capital improvements in its older power plants without making corresponding emission control upgrades as required by law.

Additional states involved in the lawsuit are New York, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont, and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

AEP will also pay a $15 million civil penalty to the U.S. Treasury under the settlement.

Connecticut continues to pursue Clean Air Act cases against power plant operators Cinergy and Allegheny Energy. The states previously settled with VEPCO (Virginia Electric Power Co.) and Ohio Edison.

Source: Connecticut Attorney General

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