TVA smokestack scrubbers to help clear Smokies air

TVA officials said Thursday a $277 million smokestack "scrubber" system is nearly complete at the plant near Oak Ridge and should go into operation in early December, after three years of construction.

The building-size scrubber is expected to remove about 95 percent of the 40,000 tons of sulfur dioxide emitted annually from the plant, potentially reducing the manmade haze and acid rain that plague the Smokies national park on the Tennessee-North Carolina border.

TVA plans to add scrubbers to its two other coal plants in eastern Tennessee--the Kingston and John Sevier stations--by 2009-2010 and 2013, respectively. That also should help air quality in the Smokies, which has been unfavorably compared to Los Angeles and Atlanta.

"I believe between this and Kingston and John Sevier, you will be able to see a difference: less haze and less impact on the foliage," Bull Run plant manager Ric Wiggall said. "From the perspective of Bull Run, you will start to see it this winter and in the spring."

Expected to be online in two weeks, the scrubber will inject a limestone slurry into flue gas to remove the sulfur dioxide. The byproducts are gypsum that can be recycled into wallboard and the white water vapor that will steam up through the scrubber's own 500-foot smokestack.

Knoxville-based TVA, the nation's largest public utility, has spent more than $4.8 billion to reduce coal plant emissions since 1977 and has committed to spend at least $1 billion more on additional measures. But it also has fought lawsuits brought by environmentalists to move faster.

The National Parks Conservation Association and others sued TVA in 2001 over Bull Run. They claimed TVA made such significant upgrades in the plant in 1988 that the plant should be required to meet new air-quality standards.

The case is still pending in the federal courts. While the suit may now be moot for Bull Run with the startup of the scrubber there, "it remains important for all of the other boilers TVA has burning uncontrolled for sulfur," said Don Barger, regional director for the parks' group.

Bull Run, an 880-megawatt station capable of serving 430,000 homes, opened in 1967 and is the newest of TVA's 11 coal-fired power stations in Tennessee, Alabama and Kentucky. Most were built in the 1950s. About half of these plants' 59 boilers now have scrubbers or will get them under current plans.