W.S. Lee Steam Station

W.S. Lee Steam Station is a 355 megawatt (MW) coal-fired power station owned and operated by Duke Energy near Pelzer, South Carolina. However, on its website Duke Energy list the plant as being a 370 megawatt station, including the out put from two 41 megawatt gas-fired turbines which in 2007 replaced three earlier coal-fired units.

Plant Data

 * Owner/Parent Company: Duke Energy
 * Plant Nameplate Capacity: 355 MW (Megawatts)
 * Units and In-Service Dates: 90 MW (1951), 90 MW (1951), 175 MW (1958)
 * Location: Hwy. S-4/178, Pelzer, SC 29669
 * GPS Coordinates: 34.605278, -82.444444
 * Coal Consumption:
 * Coal Source:
 * Number of Employees:

Emissions Data

 * 2006 CO2 Emissions: 1,656,246 tons
 * 2006 SO2 Emissions:
 * 2006 SO2 Emissions per MWh:
 * 2006 NOx Emissions:
 * 2005 Mercury Emissions:

Coal Waste Sites

 * W.S. Lee Steam Station Primary Active Ash Pond
 * W.S. Lee Steam Station Secondary Ash Pond

Death and disease attributable to fine particle pollution from W.S. Lee Steam Station
On its website Duke Energy states that "In 2004, Duke Energy entered into a voluntary agreement with the South Carolina Department of Health & Environmental Control to install additional nitrogen oxide emission controls at Lee Steam Station. The controls support the Greenville/Spartanburg/Anderson Early Action Compact to reduce smog-forming emissions in Upstate South Carolina."

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 W.S. Lee Steam Station
Source: "Find Your Risk from Power Plant Pollution," Clean Air Task Force interactive table, accessed February 2011

W.S. Lee ranked 100th 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.

W.S. Lee Steam Station ranked number 100 on the list, with 190,030 pounds of coal combustion waste released to surface impoundments in 2006.

Related SourceWatch Articles

 * Existing U.S. Coal Plants
 * South Carolina and coal
 * Duke Energy
 * United States and coal
 * Global warming