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Midwest Victory: Federal Judge Orders Coal Plant Clean-Up

News Release from the Sierra Club Midwest Regional Office

November 7, 2007 

FEDERAL JUDGE ORDERS UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN/MADISON TO CLEAN UP COAL PLANT

Madison – Today the Honorable John C. Shabaz of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin issued an order finding the University of Wisconsin and the State Department of Administration in violation of the federal Clean Air Act for the past 5 years as they rebuilt the fifty-year old Charter Street Power Plant piecemeal without notifying DNR, without obtaining the necessary permits, and without installing modern pollution controls.  The UW Charter Street facility located in downtown Madison was built in 1954 with second-hand boilers and burns coal to produce steam for heating and cooling the University of Wisconsin campus.  The plant is jointly operated by the University and the State Department of Administration. 

In 1977 Congress exempted existing power plants from immediately installing pollution controls but envisioned within a decade that all power plants would either retire or have pollution controls installed.  Congress did not intend that in 2007, thirty years later, that aging power plants would still be spewing unabated dangerous levels of air pollution into the air.  Today the federal court found that Charter Street was one of the facilities that had systematically skirted the clean air act and was long overdue for clean up. 

“The University of Wisconsin is a world-class research institution that relies on filthy19^th Century technology to meet its energy needs,” said Annie Staten, a local Sierra Club volunteer leader.  “It is a sad spectacle that University’s researchers are at the forefront of global warming research, but the University refuses to address its own global warming emissions and lead by example.”

“For almost two years we’ve been trying to engage the University in a dialogue about retiring the Charter Street power plant and coming into compliance with federal law,” said David Bender, an attorney with Garvey, McNeil, McGillivray and representing the Sierra Club.  “When informal conversations did not work, we sent the University in December 2006 an official notice outlining the violations we had uncovered and again offered the University the opportunity to talk about solutions.  After they continued to drag their feet we filed suit in May of this year and today the Court agreed with us that the University is violating the law.”

The Charter Street Power Plant is one of Dane County’s largest sources of soot, smog, mercury, arsenic, and global warming pollution.  The specific violations uncovered by the Sierra Club occurred over the last five years and include major repairs and modifications at the facility without notifying the DNR, without obtaining a permit, and without installing modern pollution controls that cut pollution levels by 90%.

“There are much cleaner, safer ways to generate heat and electricity that don’t accelerate global warming,” notes Staten.  “We hope this legal ruling will prompt the University to commit to a firm retirement date for this aging plant and to build in its place a clean, modern power plant that showcases significant global warming pollution reductions.  We should be harnessing local energy sources like wind, solar and biomass – rather than sending our money to Wyoming for coal and Saudi Arabia for oil.” 

In August 2007 Sierra Club has also notified the University and the Doyle Administration that the Charter Street plant is currently violating the Clean Water Act by illegally draining coal-contaminated waste into Lake Monona.  Today’s decision does not address those violations.