Power company may get "allowances' on emissions

Hillsborough environmentalist Sally Thompson donates about eight hours a month to help the Tampa Electric Co. (TECO) find a home for its new power plant. It appeared TECO was beginning to care.

Now she wonders.

A current version of the federal clean-air bill, which has passed the U.S. Senate and is headed for the House, would give the power company a break on the amount of emissions it could release into the air.

"I and other people in the environmental community were incensed," Thompson said. She said the issue could come up at the May 3 meeting, where the volunteer TECO Siting Task Force will pick the top 10 sites for the proposed plant.

TECO spokesman Mike Mahoney says the bill forces TECO to "overcorrect" emission rates at existing plants and still would require them to install scrubbers at the Big Bend plant, which releases sulphur dioxide into the air.

"I'm not aware of people on the committee who are outraged. I thought it was clear after last week's Earth Day event that TECO is environmentally concerned," Mahoney said.

The clean-air bill is designed to force utility companies to make one of three choices: install scrubbers to clean their plants' emissions; switch to a cleaner fuel; or buy "allowances," at an estimated $1,000 per ton, which allow utilities flexibility. Its current version would force power plants nationwide to reduce by 10-million tons annually the amount of sulphur dioxide released into the air.

A bill supported by Sen. Connie Mack and Sen. Bob Graham would help TECO coal-burning power plants avoid expensive restrictions in the bill, now being considered by Congress. It would grant TECO a share of the state's 33,000 free allowances the company otherwise would have to buy.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., whose state provides fuel to TECO, sponsored an additional amendment to the bill that provides 5,000 additional allowances to the company, at a savings of $5-million.

"My initial reaction is that I'm underenthused by proposals to buy pollution rights, and that sounds like that's what that is," said Rich T. Paul, manager of the National Audubon Society's Tampa Bay Sanctuaries and an environmentalist on the Siting Task Force. "Something I would like to see is retrofitting of existing power plants with pollution control devices."

The 17-member volunteer task force has met monthly for eight months to find a site for TECO's next plant, a small, liquid-fuel power plant to be operating by the late 1990s and a larger, coal-burning plant that would open around the turn of the century.

When TECO originally announced plans to build the plants near environmentally sensitive Cockroach Bay, environmentalists raised an uproar and the company backed off.

It formed the task force, which has narrowed its choices to 33 sites. Their first pick from an environmental perspective is an abandoned phosphate company near Agricola in Polk County; the most economical site remains Cockroach Bay.