American Crystal Hillsboro Power Plant

American Crystal Hillsboro Power Plant is a coal-fired power station owned and operated by American Crystal Sugar Company near Hillsboro, North Dakota. The plant powers American Crystal's sugar beet processing facility.

Plant Data

 * Owner/Parent Company: American Crystal Sugar Company
 * Plant Nameplate Capacity: 13.3 MW (Megawatts)
 * Units and In-Service Dates: 13.3 MW (1990)
 * Location: U.S. Hwy. 81 North, Hillsboro, ND 58045
 * GPS Coordinates: 47.438046, -97.062586
 * Electricity Production: 89,807 MWh (2006)
 * Coal Consumption:
 * Coal Source:
 * Number of Employees:

Emissions Data

 * CO2 Emissions: 252,603 tons (2006)
 * SO2 Emissions:
 * SO2 Emissions per MWh:
 * NOx Emissions:
 * Mercury Emissions:

Death and disease attributable to fine particle pollution from American Crystal Hillsboro Power Plant
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. The study found that over 13,000 deaths and tens of thousands of cases of chronic bronchitis, acute bronchitis, asthma-related episodes and asthma-related emergency room visits, congestive heart failure, acute myocardial infarction, dysrhythmia, ischemic heart disease, chronic lung disease, peneumonia each year are attributable to fine particle pollution from U.S. coal-fired power plants. Fine particle pollution is formed from a combination of soot, acid droplets, and metals formed from sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and soot. Among those particles, the most dangerous are the smallest (smaller than 2.5 microns), 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. 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. The table below estimates the death and illness attributable to the American Crystal Hillsboro Power 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 American Crystal Hillsboro Power Plant
Source: "Find Your Risk from Power Plant Pollution," Clean Air Task Force interactive table, accessed February 2011

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