Clifty Creek Station

Clifty Creek Station is a coal-fired power station owned and operated by Ohio Valley Electric Corporation near Madison, Indiana.

Plant Data

 * Owner: Indiana-Kentucky Electric Corp.
 * Parent Company: Ohio Valley Electric Corporation (43.4% AEP, 20.5% FirstEnergy, and other companies)
 * Plant Nameplate Capacity: 1,303 MW
 * Units and In-Service Dates: 217 MW (1955), 217 MW (1955), 217 MW (1955), 217 MW (1955), 217 MW (1955), 217 MW (1956)
 * Location: 1335 Clifty Hollow Rd., Madison, IN 47250
 * GPS Coordinates: 38.738722, -85.4165
 * Coal Consumption:
 * Coal Source:
 * Number of Employees:

Emissions Data

 * 2006 CO2 Emissions: 8,811,930 tons
 * 2006 SO2 Emissions: 65,372 tons
 * 2006 SO2 Emissions per MWh:
 * 2006 NOx Emissions: 21,662 tons
 * 2005 Mercury Emissions: 390 lb.

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

Coal Waste Site

 * Clifty Creek Station West Boiler Slag Pond

Clifty Creek ranked 52nd 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.

Clifty Creek Station ranked number 52 on the list, with 590,808 pounds of coal combustion waste released to surface impoundments in 2006.

Citizen Activism
Valley Watch's Executive Director, John Blair, has called the Clifty Creek Station near Madison, Indiana "one of Indiana's largest, dirtiest and oldest coal fired power plants Coming on-line in 1955 to serve a single customer--the now defunct uranium enrichment facility operated by the U.S Department of Energy in Portsmouth, Ohio- Clifty Creek today is nothing more than an incredibly old and dirty "merchant" plant."

In 2003 Valley called for a comprehensive study on the environmental and health effects of the plant in the area. In 2007 the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) asked the EPA to add 16 additional sites to its Coal Combustion Waste Damage Assessment list. Included in EIP's report was Clifty Creek, which they stated that the waste from the site is polluting groundwater tables. While no lawsuits have yet to be filed Clifty Creek is the 52nd most polluting coal waste site in the nation. Even so, scrubbers are set to be installed at the facility by the end of 2010. Valley Watch and others have argued that this will only prolong the life of the plant and not address carbon dioxide emissions or coal waste problems.

On July 11, 2008, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down (vacated in its entirety) the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR). The court ruled that CAIR would not require individual states to reduce emissions but rather focused on regional emissions reductions goals and cap and trade, conflicting with the requirements for clear results of the Clean Air Act. Construction that had begun on scrubbers at Clifty was ended.

On July 24, 2010, the Clifty plant was shut down after a boiler tube failed unexpectedly and steam leaked out of it. No one was injured. Although the failure was in tubing for just one of the six boilers, all were shut down for inspection. There is no estimate of when the power plant will begin fully operating again.

Blair has said the entire plant should be retired since it does not serve as baseload power by any of its owners. Plant owners say the closure will not have an impact on electricity availability for any of the companies that own the plant or their customers.

Related SourceWatch Articles

 * Existing U.S. Coal Plants
 * Indiana and coal
 * Ohio Valley Electric Corporation
 * American Electric Power
 * FirstEnergy
 * United States and coal
 * Global warming
 * Coal