Boswell Energy Center

Clay Boswell Energy Center is a coal-fired power station owned and operated by ALLETE near Cohasset, Minnesota.

Plant Data

 * Owner: Minnesota Power
 * Parent Company: ALLETE
 * Plant Nameplate Capacity: 1,073 MW
 * Units and In-Service Dates: 75 MW (1958), 75 MW (1960), 365 MW (1963), 558 MW (1980)
 * Location: 1210 NW 3rd St., Cohasset, MN 55721
 * GPS Coordinates: 47.261963, -93.651372
 * Coal Consumption:
 * Coal Source:
 * Number of Employees:

Emissions Data

 * 2006 CO2 Emissions: 8,107,209 tons
 * 2006 SO2 Emissions: 20,407 tons
 * 2006 SO2 Emissions per MWh:
 * 2006 NOx Emissions: 13,603 tons
 * 2005 Mercury Emissions: 279 lb.

Death and disease attributable to fine particle pollution from Boswell Energy Center
In 2010, Abt Associates issued a study commissioned by the Clean Air Task Force, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization, quantifying the deaths and other health effects attributable to fine particle pollution from coal-fired power plants. Fine particle pollution consists of a complex mixture of soot, heavy metals, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides. Among these particles, the most dangerous are those less than 2.5 microns in diameter, which are so tiny that they can evade the lung's natural defenses, enter the bloodstream, and be transported to vital organs. Impacts are especially severe among the elderly, children, and those with respiratory disease. The study found that over 13,000 deaths and tens of thousands of cases of chronic bronchitis, acute bronchitis, asthma, congestive heart failure, acute myocardial infarction, dysrhythmia, ischemic heart disease, chronic lung disease, and pneumonia each year are attributable to fine particle pollution from U.S. coal plant emissions. These deaths and illnesses are major examples of coal's external costs, i.e. uncompensated harms inflicted upon the public at large. Low-income and minority populations are disproportionately impacted as well, due to the tendency of companies to avoid locating power plants upwind of affluent communities. To monetize the health impact of fine particle pollution from each coal plant, Abt assigned a value of $7,300,000 to each 2010 mortality, based on a range of government and private studies. Valuations of illnesses ranged from $52 for an asthma episode to $440,000 for a case of chronic bronchitis.

Table 1: Death and disease attributable to fine particle pollution from Boswell Energy Center
Source: "Find Your Risk from Power Plant Pollution," Clean Air Task Force interactive table, accessed February 2011

Coal Waste Sites

 * Clay Boswell Energy Center Central Wastewater Treatment Pond
 * Clay Boswell Energy Center Coal Pile Sump
 * Clay Boswell Energy Center Inactive Units 1, 2 & 3 Bottom Ash Pond
 * Clay Boswell Energy Center Unit 3 Fly Ash Pond
 * Clay Boswell Energy Center Units 1, 2 & 4 Fly Ash and Scrubber Slurry Pond
 * Clay Boswell Energy Center Units 1-4 Bottom Ash Pond

Boswell ranked 18th on list of most polluting power plants in terms of coal waste
In January 2009, Sue Sturgis of the Institute of Southern Studies compiled a list of the 100 most polluting coal plants in the United States in terms of coal combustion waste (CCW) stored in surface impoundments like the one involved in the TVA Kingston Fossil Plant coal ash spill. The data came from the EPA's Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) for 2006, the most recent year available.

Boswell Energy Center ranked number 18 on the list, with 2,009,628 pounds of coal combustion waste released to surface impoundments in 2006.

Related SourceWatch Articles

 * Existing U.S. Coal Plants
 * Minnesota and coal
 * ALLETE
 * United States and coal
 * Global warming