England Generating Station

B.L. England Generating Station is a coal-fired power station that was owned and operated by Pepco Holdings near Marmora, New Jersey. On August 17, 2006, Pepco announced that its subsidiary Atlantic City Electric Company reached an agreement to sell the facility to RC Cape May Holdings, LLC, an affiliate of Rockland Capital Energy Investments, LLC for $12.2 million.

In June 2012 RC Cape May Holdings LLC said it will shut down one coal-fired unit at the B.L. England power plant and retrofit a second coal-fired unit to a natural gas turbine and will re-fuel a third, oil-burning unit with natural gas. The agreement resolves violations of the Clean Air Act that occurred when the plant was under the ownership of Atlantic Electric, Conectiv, and Pepco Holdings Co. The previous owners did not make pollution-control upgrades as required by the federal Clean Air Act when they made significant upgrades to operational features of the plant.

The agreement calls for the cessation of operation of coal-fired Unit 1 by fall 2013; until that occurs, the company must take steps to minimize emissions from this unit. Unit 2, which currently burns coal, and Unit 3, which burns fuel oil and only operates during peak demand periods, are to be converted to natural gas by May 2016. Unit 2 is to be shut down by May 2015 to allow for the conversion.

Plant Data

 * Owner: RC Cape May Holdings
 * Parent Company: Rockland Capital Energy Investments
 * Plant Nameplate Capacity: 299 Megawatts (MW)
 * Units and In-Service Dates: 136 MW (1962), 163 MW (1964)
 * Location: 900 North Shore Rd., Marmora, NJ 08223
 * GPS Coordinates: 39.289724, -74.633944
 * Coal Consumption:
 * Coal Source:
 * Number of Employees:

Emissions Data

 * 2006 CO2 Emissions: 1,681,692 tons
 * 2006 SO2 Emissions:
 * 2006 SO2 Emissions per MWh:
 * 2006 NOx Emissions:
 * 2005 Mercury Emissions:

Death and disease attributable to fine particle pollution from England Generating Station
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 the England Generating Station
Source: "Find Your Risk from Power Plant Pollution," Clean Air Task Force interactive table, accessed February 2011

Related SourceWatch Articles

 * Existing U.S. Coal Plants
 * New Jersey and coal
 * Pepco Holdings
 * United States and coal
 * Global warming