Paradise Fossil Plant

Paradise Fossil Plant is a coal-fired power station owned and operated by Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and is located in western Kentucky on the Green River near the village of Paradise.

The power station has three coal-fired generating units and "net dependable generating capacity" of approximately 2,273 megawatts (MW). TVA states that "the plant consumes some 12,350 tons of coal a day." Construction of the power station commenced in 1959 and was commissioned in 1970. According to the TVA the "plant consumes about 20,000 tons of coal a day."

November 2013: TVA announces plans to retire units 1 and 2
On November 14, 2013, TVA announced that it would retire units 1 and 2. The board also approved construction of a new gas-fired plant at a cost not to exceed $1.12 billion. The time frame for the retirements was left to the discretion of the CEO.

Plant Data

 * Owner/Parent Company: Tennessee Valley Authority
 * Plant Nameplate Capacity: 2,558 MW
 * Units and In-Service Dates: 704 MW (1963), 704 MW (1963), 1,150 MW (1970)
 * Location: 13246 Hwy. 176, Drakesboro, KY 42337
 * GPS Coordinates: 37.259722, -86.978056
 * Coal Consumption:
 * Coal Source:
 * Number of Employees:

Emissions Data

 * 2006 CO2 Emissions: 15,497,610 tons
 * 2006 SO2 Emissions: 83,926 tons
 * 2006 SO2 Emissions per MWh:
 * 2006 NOx Emissions: 43,022 tons
 * 2005 Mercury Emissions: 490 lb.

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

2011: Paradise second highest in U.S. toxic power plant emissions
A 2011 joint report by the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP), EarthJustice, and the Sierra Club rated the top power plants for toxic power plant emissions. Some of the chemicals used to rank the states’ emission status included chromium, arsenic, lead, and mercury. In terms of sheer pounds of emissions of the four highly toxic heavy metals, Paradise ranked second highest in the nation.

2009: Paradise ranked 21st 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.

Paradise Fossil Plant ranked number 21 on the list, with 1,765,148 pounds of coal combustion waste released to surface impoundments in 2006.

Citizen groups

 * Coal River Mountain Watch
 * Kentuckians for the Commonwealth
 * Kentucky Environmental Foundation
 * Kentucky Riverkeeper
 * New Power
 * Kentucky Environmental Foundation, Berea, KY, phone: (859) 986-7565
 * Sierra Club Cumberland Chapter

External Sources

 * 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.

Related SourceWatch Articles

 * Existing U.S. Coal Plants
 * Kentucky and coal
 * Tennessee Valley Authority
 * United States and coal
 * Global warming