Rush Island Power Station

Rush Island Power Station is a coal-fired power station owned and operated by Ameren near Festus, Missouri.

Plant Data

 * Owner: Union Electric Company
 * Parent Company: Ameren
 * Plant Nameplate Capacity: 1,242 MW
 * Units and In-Service Dates: 621 MW (1976), 621 MW (1977)
 * Location: 100 Big Hollow Rd., Festus, MO 63028
 * GPS Coordinates: 38.108722, -90.258056
 * Coal Consumption:
 * Coal Source:
 * Number of Employees:

Emissions Data

 * 2006 CO2 Emissions: 8,646,702 tons
 * 2006 SO2 Emissions: 28,674 tons
 * 2006 SO2 Emissions per MWh:
 * 2006 NOx Emissions: 3,967 tons
 * 2005 Mercury Emissions: 535 lb.

Air
On January 12, 2011, the EPA filed a lawsuit against Ameren, saying the company violated the New Source Review provisions of the Clean Air Act by completing major changes at the plant without getting the proper permit and without installing required new technologies to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide. Ameren Missouri denies the allegations, saying the work cited in the lawsuit was routine maintenance exempt from the EPA requirements.

Coal waste
In an administrative order, the Environmental Protection Agency alleged the unauthorized dumping of 140,000 tons of Ameren Missouri's coal ash from 2004 to 2008, fouling wetlands and other nearby waters. All of the ash came from Ameren's Rush Island plant. A May 2013 settlement would require the company to abate impacts of the ash disposal by placing a protective cap over ash piles and installing controls to prevent further migration of pollutants.

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

Coal Waste Site

 * Rush Island Power Station Ash Pond

Rush Island ranked 32nd 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.

Rush Island Power Station ranked number 32 on the list, with 1,307,769 pounds of coal combustion waste released to surface impoundments in 2006.

Related SourceWatch Articles

 * Existing U.S. Coal Plants
 * Missouri and coal
 * Ameren
 * United States and coal
 * Global warming