PITTSBURGH – On Monday the Sierra Club petitioned the EPA to object to the draft Clean Air Act permit for the Shawville coal fired power plant. The Clean Air Act was established under the Nixon administration to protect the public from toxins being pumped into the air from various sources, including coal fired power plants
According to the press release, GENON is the parent company of the operator of the Shawville facility, and owns several of Pennsylvania’s oldest and dirtiest power plants. The four boiler, 626 megawatt plant is located in northwestern Pennsylvania approximately eight miles from Clearfield. The 
plant, built in the late 1950’s and originally owned by GPU, Inc., lacks many basic emissions control technologies such as devices to control sulfur dioxide and particulates. GENON’s predecessor, RRI Mid Atlantic Power Holdings LLC filed for a renewal to its Clean Air Act permit in April of 2010 with the PA DEP but a renewal permit has yet to be issued.
Pollution from the Shawville coal fired power plant spurs a host of serious, life-threatening health problems, inflicting children with asthma, stifling childhood development and cutting short the lives of people in the area. According to the American Lung Association, this pollution increases emergency room visits and hospital admissions for respiratory problems, and leads to irreversible lung damage. Pennsylvania has 224,000 kids with asthma breathing unhealthy air thanks to big polluters like GENON.
The Sierra Club claims that Shawville’s draft permit lacks sufficient monitoring and inadequate compliance requirements regarding the plant’s particulate emissions and a lacks a compliance schedule for remedying significant, ongoing violations of the Clean Air Act. Nor does the draft permit require adequate specificity in monitoring the plant’s emissions of the dangerous pollutants sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide, and nitrous oxides.
“To corporate polluters like GENON our health is worth less than their profits. They want to continue polluting with no limits. We need to hold these corporate polluters accountable,” Said Randy Francisco, Sierra Club’s PA Beyond Coal Organizer “We cannot continue to let them ruin our children’s health for the sake of an extra buck.”
Francisco continued, “With the help of the Environmental Protection Agency we can clean up the air being polluted by the Shawville plant and protect Pennsylvania’s families by phasing out life-threatening polluters, while moving to a clean energy economy for a healthy and prosperous future.”
