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Nov. 10, 2024 |  By: Allison Kite - Missouri Independent

Ameren Missouri reaches agreement with federal prosecutors to offset clean air violations

air pollution

By Allison Kite - Missouri Independent

Ameren Missouri would spend more than $61 million to offset its past clean air violations under a joint proposal filed Wednesday in federal court.

The St. Louis-based electric utility, which serves 1.2 million customers, has been in litigation for more than a decade over its Rush Island Energy Center, which operated for years in violation of the Clean Air Act.

Ameren shut down Rush Island last month rather than install pollution controls to bring it into compliance with clean air standards. 

In the joint proposal with the U.S. Department of Justice and the environmental nonprofit Sierra Club, Ameren agreed to spend $25 million to provide vouchers for at least 125,000 Missouri households to purchase High Efficiency Particulate Air, or HEPA, filters, prioritizing low-income communities.

Ameren would spend the remaining $36 million to help St. Louis-area school districts switch to electric buses. 

Federal officials will accept comments on the proposal, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, before submitting it to the court for approval.

In a statement, Jenn DeRose, a senior field organizer for Sierra Club, said Ameren must pay for having broken the law but “cannot bring back the innocent lives that utility executives cut short or repair the environmental harms of the illegal and toxic air pollution spewed by the coal plant.” 

“I cannot stress enough that civic leaders need to understand that Ameren’s unethical business decisions harm our communities,” DeRose said, “whether it’s polluting our air and water, slow-walking the transition from coal and gas to clean energy, or disconnecting people from electricity that they desperately need to survive.”

A spokesperson for Ameren said in an emailed statement that the Department of Justice resolves the case and “will fund the implementation of two mitigation relief programs, in addition to retiring the energy center.”

Rush Island operated without pollution controls for years, releasing more than 250,000 tons of excess sulfur dioxide. Shutting down the plant will prevent future emissions, but the agreement with federal officials and the Sierra Club is meant to offset the ones Ameren can’t take back.

Ameren opened Rush Island in the mid-1970s, narrowly avoiding a 1977 update to the Clean Air Act requiring pollution controls at newly-constructed coal plants. As long as Ameren didn’t make any upgrades beyond routine maintenance, it wouldn’t have to install the controls.

But the company updated Rush Island’s two units in 2007 and 2010 without installing pollution controls, violating the 1977 Clean Air Act update and sparking a lawsuit by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

In 2019, U.S. District Court Judge for the Eastern District of Missouri Rodney Sippel ordered Ameren to obtain a permit, install scrubbers and lower its sulfur dioxide emissions. Sippel also ordered Ameren to install scrubbers to temporarily lower sulfur dioxide emissions at its larger Labadie Energy Center in Franklin County to make up for the excess emissions at Rush Island.

The 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in 2021 upheld Sippel’s order requiring Ameren to install scrubbers, but struck down the requirement at Labadie.

Later in 2021, Ameren announced it would retire Rush Island. It argued the retirement should mark the resolution of the lawsuit. But Sippel ordered Ameren and prosecutors to negotiate potential mitigation measures to make up for the sulfur dioxide emissions, which he said “harm public health and the environment, contribute to premature deaths, asthma attacks, acid rain and other adverse effects in downwind communities, including the St. Louis Metropolitan Area.”

Sippel’s order, issued in June, said over the 14 years since Rush Island’s second unit was updated without scrubbers installed, it has released 275,000 tons of sulfur dioxide. Ameren argues the figure is closer to 256,000 tons.