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Public Health, Environmental and Consumer Groups Join Forces to File Legal Action to Stop Dirty Coal Power Plant

CHICAGO, IL -- Opponents of a proposal to build a giant coal-burning power plant 55-miles south of the Chicago Loop filed their first legal action today seeking to stop the project. The groups, including American Lung Assocation of Metropolitan Chicago, Citizens Against Ruining Our Environment (Lockport), Clean Air Task Force, Lake County Conservation Alliance and Sierra Club, argue that because other states are requiring modern pollution controls on new power plants Illinois is required to follow their lead. The Indeck Corporation is seeking permission to build a power plant in the City of Elwood, Will County. With a 495-foot smoke stack and southerly summer winds, Indeck's thousands of tons of soot and smog pollution will blanket Joliet, Chicago and points north, areas that already violates federal air quality standards.

The groups filed their legal appeal of the state permit directly with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Environmental Appeals Board in Washington DC. The 24-page, single-spaced legal filing documents nine reasons why the permit fails to protect clean air in the Greater Chicago area. In particular, the groups charge, the permit allows Indeck to put out far more soot and smog pollution levels than other, cleaner power plants in other states.

"More than 70,000 Chicago-area residents are rushed to area hospitals every year," said Brian Urbaszewski, Environmental Programs Director of the American Lung Association of Metropolitan Chicago. "The State's failure to require Indeck to install modern pollution controls will mean more air pollution, more asthma attacks and more healthcare costs for all of us."

The Chicago Tribune Magazine earlier this year found that the Chicago area was "No. 1" in the National asthma epidemic because more residents die from asthma than in any other place in the United States. An estimated 660,000 residents of the six counties in Northeastern Illinois suffer from asthma and are particularly at risk from high levels of air pollution.

City of Elwood residents earlier this year made clear they don't want Indeck's unnecessary air pollution in their community. Ninety percent of them signed a petition opposing the project.

"Illinois deserves better than another dirty coal-burning power plant," said Anne Kawaters, Chair of the Sierra Club's Sauk-Calumet Group. "The Governor promised on the campaign trail that he would clean up Chicago's unhealthy levels of air pollution by requiring existing power plants to clean up and new power plants to install modern pollution controls. By approving Indeck's dirty coal plant he is breaking that promise. Consequently we have no choice but to file this legal action to protect our air."

"Illinois is lagging behind other states that are finding the balance between clean air and safe, affordable power," said John Thompson, Advocacy Coordinator of the Clean Air Task Force. "Illinois is allowing Indeck to use decades-old technology that will provide neither clean air nor safe power. Illinois can and must do better."