Volume CXXXIII, Number 9 November 9, 2001 f

Air Quality Project director Jones speaks on pollution in ME
CONOR WILLIAMS
STAFF WRITER

The director of the Air Quality Project division of the National Resources Council of Maine (NRCM), Sue Jones, spoke last Monday night in the Main Lounge of Moulton Union. The NRCM, Maine's largest environmental advocacy group, is designed primarily to research and address issues concerning public health and the environment. NRCM also does work protecting Maine's Northern Woods, addressing water pollution issues, as well as restoring and preserving rivers and their watersheds.

Jones spoke for nearly an hour on the growing concern regarding the largest single source of air pollution in Maine, the Wyman Power Station in Yarmouth. The power plant had long been responsible for significant emissions of nitric and sulfuric oxides into the local and statewide ecosystem.

Recently acquired by energy provider Florida Power and Light, the plant emits pollutants that have been causally tied to high smog levels, acid rain, haze issues, nitrification, and global warming, as well as respiratory health problems.

While the validity of some of these linkages has been denied by the industrial lobby, Jones alluded to a Harvard University study of several years ago wherein the local health and environmental quality was examined near power plants. The researchers found that in a thirty mile radius around the plant there was a much higher rate of heart attacks, asthma, and some types of cancer.

Overcoming the fiscal and political strength of the energy industry was no easy task, Jones explained.

"These people come in well-heeled. They're very politically savvy and they're not usually willing to negotiate," she said.

In the end, however, the State Board of Environmental Protection voted unanimously to force FPL to clean up the Wyman site. Next fall, FPL will install pollution control equipment estimated to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions by between 800 and 1200 tons.

This is an issue that has become important on the national level as well. Power plants across America are ecologically dangerous both to those living nearby and indirectly to others across the nation.

"Over 400 power plants [in America] are exempted from having to meet the modern pollution controls," said Jones.

Bowdoin alumnus U.S. Representative Tom Allen, Class of 1967, has sponsored a bill in the House of Representatives that would ""de-grandfather" every power plant" in the country.

"Without citizen involvement, without local citizen leadership, we never would have been able to accomplish what we have accomplished," said Jones. "Citizens can make a difference."