Albright Power Station

Albright Power Station is a power station owned and operated by the investor-owned electric utility Monongahela Power Company.

The power station has an installed capacity of 292 megawatts and is located in Albright, West Virginia.

In Feb. 2011, Allegheny was sued for exceeding arsenic discharges at the plant, violating the Clean Water Act. (More at Coal Waste below.)

On February 8, 2012, FirstEnergy announced that its Monongahela Power Company (Mon Power) subsidiary would be retiring the plant by September 1, 2012. (More at Proposed coal unit closures below.)

Plant Data

 * Owner: Monongahela Power Company
 * Parent Company: Allegheny Energy
 * Plant Nameplate Capacity: 278 MW
 * Units and In-Service Dates: 69 MW (1952), 69 MW (1952), 140 MW (1954)
 * Location: Route 26, Albright, WV 26519
 * GPS Coordinates: 39.489694, -79.639389
 * Coal Consumption:
 * Coal Source:
 * Number of Employees:

Emissions Data

 * 2006 CO2 Emissions: 1,610,136 tons
 * 2006 SO2 Emissions:
 * 2006 SO2 Emissions per MWh:
 * 2006 NOx Emissions:
 * 2005 Mercury Emissions:

The following table gives more info on this plant's SO2 emissions levels, as well as on whatever SO2 emissions "scrubbers" (Flue Gas Desulfurization units, or FGDs) have been installed at the plant. Each of the plant's units is listed separately, and at the bottom overall data for the plant is listed.

Proposed coal unit closures
On February 8, 2012, FirstEnergy announced that its Monongahela Power Company (Mon Power) subsidiary would be retiring three older coal-fired power plants located in West Virginia by September 1, 2012: Albright Power Station, Willow Island Power Station, and Rivesville Power Station. The total capacity of the regulated plants is 660 megawatts (MW), about 3 percent of FirstEnergy’s total regulated and competitive generation portfolio. Recently, the plants had served mostly as peaking facilities, generating around less than 1 percent of the electricity produced by FirstEnergy over the past three years. The company said the decision to close the plants was based on the EPA's Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) that were recently finalized, and other environmental regulations.

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

Coal waste
On Feb. 7, 2011, the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, West Virginia Rivers Coalition, and the West Virginia Chapter of the Sierra Club released a joint statement saying Allegheny must clean up arsenic releases from the Albright Power Station that are flowing into the nearby Cheat River watershed. The groups said the releases violate the Clean Water Act, saying Allegheny's own information shows illegal arsenic discharges occurred between July and October 2010. Arsenic in drinking water can cause cancer, nervous system damage and other problems. The groups also claim that Allegheny is doing a poor job testing for selenium. The naturally occurring element is associated with coal mining in parts of West Virginia. Studies have found it's toxic to aquatic life and, in humans, high-level exposure can damage the kidneys, liver, and central nervous and circulatory systems.

External Resources

 * Existing Electric Generating Units in the United States, 2005, Energy Information Administration, accessed Jan. 2009.
 * Environmental Integrity Project, "Dirty Kilowatts: America’s Most Polluting Power Plants", July 2007.
 * Facility Registry System, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, accessed Jan. 2009.
 * Carbon Monitoring for Action database, accessed Feb. 2009.

Related SourceWatch Articles

 * Existing U.S. Coal Plants
 * West Virginia and coal
 * Allegheny Energy
 * United States and coal
 * Global warming
 * Coal