Big Sandy Plant

Big Sandy Plant is a coal-fired power station owned and operated by American Electric Power near Louisa, Kentucky. The station's two generating units are slated for closure in 2015.

Plant Data

 * Owner: Kentucky Power Company
 * Parent Company: American Electric Power
 * Plant Nameplate Capacity: 1,097 MW
 * Units and In-Service Dates: 281 MW (1963), 816 MW (1969)
 * Location: 23000 Highway 23 North, Louisa, KY 41230
 * GPS Coordinates: 38.177389, -82.624778
 * Coal Consumption:
 * Coal Sources (2009)
 * Holden 22 Surface Mine Kentucky)
 * Falcon Resource (West Virginia)
 * Independence Complex (West Virginia)
 * Klah Creek Prep Plant (West Virginia)
 * MC Mining Prep Plant (Kentucky)
 * Minerite (Kentucky)
 * Mountaineer II Mine (West Virginia)
 * Beech Fork Prep Plant #1 (Kentucky)
 * Raven Mine 1 (Kentucky)
 * Rhino Energy Rob Fork Processing (Kentucky)
 * Supreme Energy Prep Plant (Kentucky)
 * Toney's Fork Surface Mine (West Virginia)

Coal plant closure
On June 9, 2011, AEP announced that, based on impending EPA regulations as proposed, AEP’s compliance plan would retire nearly 6,000 megawatts (MW) of coal-fueled power generation; upgrade or install new advanced emissions reduction equipment on another 10,100 MW; refuel 1,070 MW of coal generation as 932 MW of natural gas capacity; and build 1,220 MW of natural gas-fueled generation. The cost of AEP’s compliance plan could range from $6 billion to $8 billion in capital investment through the end of the decade. AEP’s current plan for compliance with the rules as proposed includes permanently retiring five of its coal-fueled power plants.

In addition, six other plants which will reduce their power output:


 * Big Sandy Plant, Louisa, Ky. - Units 1 and 2* (1,078 MW) retired by Dec. 31, 2014; Big Sandy Unit 1 would be rebuilt as a 640-MW natural gas plant by Dec. 31, 2015 (In December 2011, AEP said it plans to seek a 31 percent rate increase to keep Unit 2 in Kentucky operating, at a cost to customers of almost $1 billion. On May 30, 2012, AEP withdrew that request, saying it may determine later if a scrubber is needed); ;
 * Clinch River Plant, Cleveland, Va. - Unit 3 (235 MW) retired by Dec. 31, 2014; Units 1 and 2 (470 MW total) would be refueled with natural gas with a capacity of 422 MW by Dec. 31, 2014;
 * Conesville Power Plant, Conesville, Ohio - Unit 3 (165 MW) retired by Dec. 31, 2012; Units 5 and 6 (800 MW total) would continue operating with retrofits;
 * Muskingum River Plant, Beverly, Ohio - Units 1-4 (840 MW) retired by Dec. 31, 2014; Muskingum River Unit 5 (600 MW) may be refueled with natural gas with a capacity of 510 MW by Dec. 31, 2014, depending on regulatory treatment in Ohio;
 * Tanners Creek Plant, Lawrenceburg, Indiana - Units 1, 2 and 3 (495 MW) retired by Dec. 31, 2014; Unit 4 (500 MW) would continue to operate with retrofits; and
 * Welsh Power Plant, Pittsburg, Texas - Unit 2 (528 MW) retired by Dec. 31, 2014; Units 1 and 3 (1,056 MW) would continue to operate with retrofits.

Units 1 and 2 to be shut down by 2015
On December 19, 2012, Kentucky Power said it would retire Big Sandy units 1 and 2 in 2015. Unit 1 may be converted to natural gas, The power from Unit 2 will be obtained from AEP Ohio's Dean Mitchell Generating Station.

On February 25, 2013, AEP announced that it had agreed to stop burning coal at its Big Sandy Power Plant Unit 2 by 2015, updating an earlier 2007 settlement over a lawsuit filed in 1999.

Emissions Data

 * 2006 CO2 Emissions: 6,830,275 tons
 * 2006 SO2 Emissions: 46,476 tons
 * 2006 SO2 Emissions per MWh:
 * 2006 NOx Emissions: 13,851 tons
 * 2005 Mercury Emissions: 281 lb.

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

Coal Waste Site

 * Big Sandy Plant Bottom Ash
 * Big Sandy Plant Fly Ash

Big Sandy ranked 40th 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.

Big Sandy Plant ranked number 40 on the list, with 915,079 pounds of coal combustion waste released to surface impoundments in 2006.

"High Hazard" Surface Impoundment
Big Sandy Plant's Fly Ash surface impoundment is on the EPA's official June 2009 list of Coal Combustion Residue (CCR) Surface Impoundments with High Hazard Potential Ratings. The rating applies to sites at which a dam failure would most likely cause loss of human life, but does not assess of the likelihood of such an event.

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 resources

 * 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
 * American Electric Power
 * United States and coal
 * Global warming