Senator EAGLETON. Have other utilities in other parts of the country worked on this same process? Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. One other utility is working on the same process. Senator EAGLETON. Are they experiencing the same headaches? Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. Many of the same problems, yes, sir. Senator EAGLETON. You said with respect to the Sioux plant that the system is working at 98 percent? Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. No, I said it was installed as a 98 percent collector. Senator EAGLETON. As a 98 percent collector? Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. But it did not do 98 percent, as many of the people in the Alton area know. It did 92 percent. We are working on corrections to get up to 98 percent, we think we are approaching that. The equipment did not perform as specified and we have had to make a good deal of changes to it. Senator EAGLETON. There is a body of belief at least among certain medical and scientific experts that even 98 percent is too lenient. Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. I think 98 percent would not be good enough on a pulverised coal boiler, and from our experience on the cyclones I would not be satisfied to install this plant again with a 98 percent collector, but you must recognize that on the cyclone boiler, less ash goes up the stack than on a pulverized coal boiler. At least as you look at it, not as high an efficiency is required. What we have at Sioux is the visual problem which has been very disappointing to us. and I am sure very disappointing to the residents of the area. Senator EAGLETON. What kind of coal are you using? Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. We use high sulfur coal, southern Illinois coal. At one plant in the city we are burning a low sulfur coal to comply with the city regulations. Senator EAGLETON. Only at one plant are you using low sulfur. Is that shipped in from Kentucky? Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. No, it is shipped in from southern Illinois. Senator EAGLETON. Is it contemplated that for the next years ahead, looking into the calendar year 1970 and as far ahead as 1971, you will continue to use high sulfur coal in your plants other than one exception? Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. We told the county this, who have jurisdiction over one of our plants where we have this SO2 removal system, that we would continue to consider low sulfur coal as an alternative to the SO, removal system, and the SO2 removal system was installed a year ago and we have been having trouble with it. We are not ready to say what we are going to do because the regulations that affect us do not become effective until March 1970, and we have not revealed to the county yet just what our plans are. So I really can't tell you precisely. Senator EAGLETON. Well, for the record, which will be read by other Senators in Washington, I should point out-and you will be free to add on to this there has been a continuing dialog or dispute in this area with respect to the utilization of high sulfur coal. Such coal is found in great abundance in southern Illinois. It is quite natural that utilities adjacent to that area would find it convenient and more inexpensive to utilize that source of power or fuel. However, it has evoked some resentment in this community over whether that level of high sulfur coal should continue to be used. Is that a brief and fair summary of some history on the subject? Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. Yes. I am not at all sure about the resentment, but the regulations affecting our plants do not become effective until March 1970. We had a fairly clear understanding with the Air Conservation Commission that our target approach would be to put in the SO2 removal system, at least that was their thought, rather than low sulfur coal, recognizing the limitation on the quantity of low sulfur coal in Illinois. Not to say there isn't some there, there is, we buy it, but there is not a great quantity of it. And our effort to meet the regulations has been to develop SO, removal technology. And, of course, we believe that the tall stack such as we have at Sioux is certainly an acceptable device for minimizing ground level concentrations, although most people don't believe that. Senator EAGLETON. One of my associates here handed me a card on that subject. Is it your position that tall stacks are an effective control method? Is it your position, if you make the smoke stack tall enough, that is a good way of controlling pollution? Simply to get it up higher? Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. Scientifically supported, Senator. The basic assumption you have to make is, if the ground level ambient concentrations are satisfactory then you have a satisfactory control. Now we don't at all believe that this is the final solution to burning coal in large powerplants. We think ultimately we will have to have sulfur removal devices. But while the technology is being developed, and it is in rather primitive form at the moment, the tall stack is a very effective control device and as a matter of fact the only control device that we have. We are measuring ground level concentrations at nine stations in the area to prove our point on the tall stacks. Senator EAGLETON. Because the emissions still come out of the stack where it is a feet high or 3x feet high, is not this perhaps an interim method of avoiding some of the more apparent evidences of air pollution? But insofar as being any kind of control method, it really is not a control method at all? Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. In my opinion it is a very acceptable control method, but we have a great selling job to do on that because hardly anyone will agree with that primarily because of I think the emotional concept that if you don't take it out, it is bad. But our point is if the ground level concentrations are low and if we can show that and demonstrate it that then we are doing the job. Senator EAGLETON, I have an advertisement from March of 1967 placed in the metropolitan papers by the Industrial Waste Control Council in which your Council took a public position against low sulfur coal on the ground that low sulfur coal is not available. Would you say. that that is still the same situation today? Is low sulfur coal still unavailable? Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. I don't think that ad was precise enough. The coal is in the ground in Illinois, low sulfur coal is in the ground. The purpose of the ad was to say, in effect, it wasn't available to the industrial market of St. Louis and, in the simplification of an ad, I think it became imprecise. There is coal in the ground, low sulfur coal. We are getting some and we may get more. Senator EAGLETON. At this time we will place the ad in its entirety in the record. (The exhibit is as follows:) [St. Louis Post Dispatch, Mar. 9, 1967] DO YOU WANT CLEAN AIR? Of course you do. So do we. But a 2 per cent sulphur limit on coal burned in the St. Louis area is not needed. It would stop progress. It would affect the jobs of thousands of people. HERE ARE THE FACTS 1. The East-West Gateway Coordinating Council, which consists of elected officials from various governmental units in the entire St. Louis Metropolitan area, recently recommended a complete set of air pollution regulations. One of the regulations they recommended set a 3.3 per cent sulphur limit for coal. This is reasonable. 2. The Missouri Air Conservation Commission recently passed a group of air pollution regulations for the St. Louis area. FIVE of the SEVEN members of the Missouri Commission do not live in the St. Louis area. They set a 2 per cent sulphur limit on coal. This is in direct conflict with the vast majority of scientific data on this subject and the testimony of many competent scientists. 3. Representatives of the U.S. Public Health Service admitted that they mathematically underestimated the reduction of sulphur dioxide that would take place in the central urbanized area of St. Louis due to the decreased use of coal by small business establishments and residents. Recalculations (verified by the Public Health Service) show that the sulphur dioxide level will be reduced 42 percent by 1970 and 47 percent by 1975 without the handicap of using 2 per cent sulphur coal. The Public Health Service previously announced that a 43 per cent sulphur dioxide reduction was a first-step goal. 4. Dr. Willard Machle, a physician and well-known consultant in occupational medicine and toxicology, Dr. Eric Cassell, Associate Professor of Community Medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and one of the foremost experts on the medical effects of air pollution, and Dr. W. L. Faith, who served as a consultant to the Los Angeles Air Pollution District, all testified at recent air pollution hearings that sulphur dioxide levels in St. Louis do not constitute a health hazard. The 42 per cent and 47 per cent reductions will further insure that we will have no possible harmful health effects from sulphur dioride. 5. Dean Coston, Assistant to John Gardner, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, recently told the U.S. Senate Sub-committee on Air and Water Pollution that standards could not be set to limit sulphur oxides where "we just don't have the technology yet." The sub-committee indicated that federal standards for sulphur dioxide emissions would not be published for some time because of lack of technology in this area. This was ignored by the Missouri Air Conservation Commission. 6. This regulation will rule out the use of all coal deposits in Missouri. more than 90 per cent of those in Illinois and the greatest percentage of all coal deposits East of the Mississippi River. St. Louis depends on its nearby low-cost coal deposits. They are a prime reason for our prosperity and economic progress. They serve as a magnet to attract new industry. If we cannot use them, all of us will be in serious trouble. The cost of coal could more than double. The prices of products and services in St. Louis will be significantly increased. New industries cannot be expected to move into areas where such fuel restrictions prevail. These are the facts. It may be popular to wave flags for "clean air" and industry is waving a few of its own. Coal companies, coal users and industry in general are spending millions of dollars on research and equipment and are committed to spend many millions more to eliminate air pollution. Clean air must come from new technology and not from hastily conceived and unrealistic regulations. The St. Louis area does not need and cannot afford a 2 per cent sulphur limit on coal! Senator EAGLETON. Is the cost of doing business as vital a factor to Union Electric as it might be to another company? Let me spell that out a little further. As I said to one of the previous witnesses, all businesses have costs that they incur in doing business. I mentioned labor, the acquisition of raw materials, the whole gamut of industrial endeavor that comprises the cost of doing business. That cost industry passes on to the ultimate consumer. You are a utility and thus in a particularly interesting position because when you add up all your costs of doing business, you are guaranteed a rate of return and it is completely passed on to the ultimate consumer. With that in mind and with the interest of the area in clean air, why shouldn't Union Electric (a) acquire low sulfur coal for all of its plants, and (b) spend dollars for the construction of the most sophisticated pollution control equipment? Knowing full well it is going to cost them money, but these costs are going to be approved by the Public Service Commission in Jefferson City and passed on to the home owners? Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. Yes; a good question, sir. I think probably I would only take exception with one word that you used, Senator. When you said our costs will be precisely passed on to customers, because we have gone through a rate case, asked for a certain percentage and so far in Illinois we have received less. So it is not as precise an approach, but in general your statement is accurate. We feel a responsibility to the community to not spend money where it would not accomplish the necessary good. And in this area of air pollution we don't consider ourselves the final judges of this. We consider the appointed officials and elected officials of government as the final judges. But because we have developed some expertise in this field we do feel that we need to resist attempts to make us spend money where we honestly feel that money is not needed, that it is not needed to spend that money because that money then is passed on to the customer, this is our only objection. Once the public understands, and this is a complicated problem, but once the public understands this and the technology is developed, we are not going to hesitate to put the money in control equipment, we never have. As a matter of fact once SO, processes are developed we will put them on our new plants as we build them. But we are going to make sure that the public understands our position about the tall stack before we go back to every plant we have ever built and spend tens of millions of dollars. And it isn't necessarily true that the Public Service Commission is automatically going to give us the rate increase either, but it generally does. I will accept the statement that we are in a unique position in this field. Senator EAGLETON. Thank you very much, Mr. McLaughlin. We appreciate your presence here today. Mr. Kester, will you stand up, please? Do you want to be heard, Mr. Kester? If you wish to testify, you are welcome to at this time. STATEMENT OF BRUCE E. KESTER, DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH, MISSOURI PORTLAND CEMENT CO., AND PRESIDENT OF THE INDUSTRIAL WASTE COUNCIL Mr. KESTER. Senator, I am Bruce E. Kester, director of research for Missouri Portland Cement Co., and president of the Industrial Waste Control Council. I am sorry that my remarks today are not in prepared form for you. Let me assure you that it was not cowardice that kept me from appearing before this group today. The basic reason was that we have supplied the county air pollution control district and the State of Missouri Air Conservation Commission and the National Air Pollution Control Administration in Durham, N.C. with the complete emission data, the proposed programs for compliance and our efforts to date, to all of these agencies. We have been progressively appearing before numerous individuals. Our basic responsibility is to the St. Louis County Air Pollution Control District and to that district we have issued complete and total information on any request, and some of it not even requested. You have heard the testimony today to the effect of a 98 percent collection efficiency. Let me assure you that the latest test data of this summer issued to the St. Louis County Air Pollution Control District on testing of our plant's emission under ASME Power Test Code 27, which is a standard method of test, showed 98.87 percent collection efficiency. Since this does not seem to be adequate the corporation has embarked upon a pollution control program, the first engineering plans which were issued on this were reviewed by the county and also by a member of the U.S. Public Health Service. The gentleman from the U.S. Public Health Service did not believe the system was adequate, this was a debatable point but we accepted the judgment and went back to the drawing board again. We did issue a plan for collection efficiency exceeding 99.9 percent. Such plans were approved by the county pollution control district and if today you look at our plant you will see five stories of structural steel erected in place and with the working parts of it now being installed in a new additional three quarter of a million dollar precipitator. Thank you. Senator EAGLETON. Thank you, Mr. Kester. The county air pollution control law I think went into effect in the spring of 1967. Is that correct? Mr. KESTER. That is correct. Senator EAGLETON. How many variances from the standard as established in that code has Missouri Portland been granted by the county officials? Mr. KESTER. We have been granted a variance which dated from June 1967 to June 1968 and June 1968 to June 1969, and these were dependent upon development of engineering plans, the letting of contracts for work and purchase of equipment and suitable progress reports filed. I refiled in June of 1969 during the strike of the ironworkers saying that we requested variance for completion of this installation which is scheduled for and at that time I said would hopefully be accomplished by the end of this year. The ironworkers' strike as you know has ended and construction is proceeding at a rapid pace. We will have completed the installation this winter barring anything unforeseen again. Senator EAGLETON. Would you be a little more precise than this winter? Just give us a month you think it might be operative. We won't hold you to it. Mr. KESTER. Precision is very difficult. It is my hope that it will be during the month of January 1970 that this installation will go in operation. Senator EAGLETON. If it goes in on that date and works and functions. as effectively as you reasonably hope that it will, what will be its percent of effectiveness? Mr. KESTER. Our guarantee is 99.93. I doubt it will meet it. |