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Redondo power plant owners fined $17-million for exceeding air pollution limits
by Jason Dietrich
The AES corporation reached a record $17-million settlement with pollution regulators for exceeding legal limits of smog-causing chemicals at its Los Alamitos Plant.
According to the agreement, AES owes the South Coast Air Quality Management District $13 million within 30 days or the December 13 agreement and the remaining $4 million by July 1, 2001. The company also agreed to install pollution control systems on all their generators that don’t already have them, including the ones at AES Redondo Beach.
Redondo generators five and six were shut down last month after AES was threatened with stiff pollution fines. Plant owners have agreed to only run five and six, the plant’s oldest and dirtiest generators when the coast’s power supply is threateningly low.
Older, unregulated generators can create as much as 10 times the nitrogen oxide pollution as newer generators. Nitrogen oxide is a component of smog and other forms of air pollution.
AES’s Los Alamitos plant went over the allotted amount of nitrogen oxide emissions by about 685,000 pounds this summer. Regulators predict that the plant may go over the fourth quarter limit by 500,000 pounds
"This landmark settlement will serve as a strong deterrent to future violations. It also will ensure that AES can generate electricity to help ease the state’s power shortage while guaranteeing protection for the environment," said AQMD executive officer Barry Wallerstein.
Tightening air pollution standards and a summer of record electrical demand spurred many electrical producers to run their generators more than usual. Power plants could purchase "pollution credits" from plants that had already installed pollution controls. But the end of summer, the pool of available credits had dried up.
AES spokesman Aaron Thomas said in an earlier interview that the need to keep lights on and air conditioners humming, combined with the mandate to reduce pollution put AES between a rock and a hard place.
"When we saw that the demand for our power was going to be much higher than in years past went to the district telling them that we were likely to be pushing our (nitrogen oxides) limits. They told us it was ill advised to jeopardize the reliability of the power grid and that they were committed to working through pollution issues after the fact. So we feel a little jammed in the middle, having acted in good faith to respond to power needs over the summer," Thomas said.
AQMD officials said that they sat down with electrical generating companies before the pollution levels were exceeded to try and work out a compliance plan.
"A lot of companies spent the money to install pollution-control equipment ahead of time. We need to keep the playing field level. We can’t be letting companies off lightly," said Bill Webster of the AQMD. ER