Lee Steam Plant

Lee Steam Electric Plant is a coal-fired power station owned and operated by Progress Energy near Goldsboro, North Carolina. On January 9, 2011, Duke Energy said it agreed to buy Progress Energy for $13.7 billion in stock, creating the largest U.S. power company if it wins approval from regulators in North and South Carolina.

Progress Energy announces plan to close coal plant
On August 18, 2009, Progress Energy announced a plan to close 3 units at its Lee plant. The company is seeking regulatory approval to build a new natural gas-fired plant at the site. As proposed, the new plant would increase generation capacity at the site by about 550 megawatts, while still reducing overall emissions, including carbon dioxide. The project will cost an estimated $900 million, and is expected to be operational in 2013. North Carolina State regulators approved the plan on October 1.

Progress Energy to shut more N.C. coal plants
On December 1, 2009, Progress Energy Carolinas announced that by the end of 2017 it would permanently close all of its North Carolina coal plants without sulfur dioxide scrubbers. The 11 units at L.V. Sutton, Cape Fear, Weatherspoon, and Lee total almost 1,500 megawatts and represent about a third of the utility's coal-fired power generation in N.C. The retirement plan includes the following:


 * Lee is scheduled for retirement in 2013.
 * Sutton is slated for closure in 2014. Progress hopes to replace it with a natural gas-fired power plant.
 * Cape Fear and Weatherspoon will be shut down between 2013 and 2017. The company is considering converting 50 to 150MW of the total capacity to burn wood waste.

The closure plan was filed in response to a request by the N.C. Utilities Commission, which ordered Progress to provide its retirement schedule for "unscrubbed" coal-fired units in North Carolina. The request was a condition of the commission's approval of Progress' plan to close Lee and build a 950-MW natural gas plant at the site.

Plant Data

 * Owner: Progress Energy Carolinas Inc.
 * Parent Company: Progress Energy
 * Plant Nameplate Capacity: 402 MW (Megawatts)
 * Units and In-Service Dates: 75 MW (1951), 75 MW (1952), 252 MW (1962)
 * Location: 1677 Old Smithfield Rd., Goldsboro, NC 27530
 * GPS Coordinates: 35.378023, -78.085626
 * Coal Consumption:
 * Coal Source:
 * Number of Employees:

Emissions Data

 * 2006 CO2 Emissions: 2,501,476 tons
 * 2006 SO2 Emissions:
 * 2006 SO2 Emissions per MWh:
 * 2006 NOx Emissions:
 * 2005 Mercury Emissions:

Coal Waste Site

 * Lee Steam Plant 1980 Pond

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

Lee ranked 79th 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.

Lee Steam Plant ranked number 79 on the list, with 356,078 pounds of coal combustion waste released to surface impoundments in 2006.

Citizen groups

 * Appalachian Voices
 * Asheville Rising Tide
 * Canary Coalition
 * North Carolina Waste Awareness And Reduction Network
 * Sierra Club North Carolina Chapter
 * Southern Environmental Law Center
 * StopCliffside.org
 * Western North Carolina Alliance

Related SourceWatch Articles

 * Existing U.S. Coal Plants
 * North Carolina and coal
 * Progress Energy
 * United States and coal
 * Global warming