Download DEP's full report on the blue haze

Early Thursday, the calls started again. Residents in western Kanawha County complained to Metro 911 dispatchers about a foul odor and a blue haze.

Emergency crews went on alert. Department of Environmental Protection inspectors raced to investigate.

By the time DEP teams got there, the problem had dissipated. Inspectors couldn't pinpoint a possible source.

But the brief frenzy was a reminder of the late January incident when a cloud of blue haze hung over the Kanawha Valley.

Soon after that incident, DEP officials said they believed American Electric Power's John Amos power plant was to blame. They said the incident revealed that the Amos plant was spewing far more sulfuric acid into Kanawha Valley air than the company had previously disclosed.

Since then, DEP has issued a detailed report on the "Blue Haze Incident" and has cited AEP for pollution violations related to the blue haze. Power company officials say DEP is wrong, and they've challenged a formal notice of violation issued by the agency.

John Benedict, director of DEP's Division of Air Quality, says his agency is looking to get some stronger commitments from AEP about how it will prevent recurrences of the blue haze.

"We made certain allegations, and we want to sit down and talk about them," Benedict said. "Although they have a system in place, supposedly, there is no commitment about how they will operate that system to help mitigate the impacts we saw back in January."

Shortly after lunch on Jan. 25, a blue haze started to appear in the air across the Kanawha Valley. Residents called emergency officials to complain about a strange odor, and questioned whether there had been a major chemical leak. County officials began calling area plants, but none reported having any unusual releases or operating problems.

For hours, residents wondered if it was safe to walk back from lunch, drive across town to buy groceries, or pick up their kids from school.

Not until early evening did anyone figure out where the blue haze was coming from. DEP inspectors, dispatched over the Valley in a helicopter, tracked it down to a pollution plume from the Amos plant, just across the Kanawha River from Poca, northwest from downtown Charleston.

No injuries or illnesses were reported. But regulators and public health officials took no samples to see how much sulfuric acid was in the Valley's air.

AEP officials said nothing unusual happened at their plant that day. They blamed the blue haze on an unusually strong weather event that trapped normal pollution in the Valley.

In a detailed report finalized last month, DEP officials concluded that "a preponderance of the evidence" shows Amos emissions were "a major contributor to the haze problem" once the weather inversion occurred.

Download DEP's full report on the blue haze

Early Thursday, the calls started again. Residents in western Kanawha County complained to Metro 911 dispatchers about a foul odor and a blue haze.

Emergency crews went on alert. Department of Environmental Protection inspectors raced to investigate.

By the time DEP teams got there, the problem had dissipated. Inspectors couldn't pinpoint a possible source.

But the brief frenzy was a reminder of the late January incident when a cloud of blue haze hung over the Kanawha Valley.

Soon after that incident, DEP officials said they believed American Electric Power's John Amos power plant was to blame. They said the incident revealed that the Amos plant was spewing far more sulfuric acid into Kanawha Valley air than the company had previously disclosed.

Since then, DEP has issued a detailed report on the "Blue Haze Incident" and has cited AEP for pollution violations related to the blue haze. Power company officials say DEP is wrong, and they've challenged a formal notice of violation issued by the agency.

John Benedict, director of DEP's Division of Air Quality, says his agency is looking to get some stronger commitments from AEP about how it will prevent recurrences of the blue haze.

"We made certain allegations, and we want to sit down and talk about them," Benedict said. "Although they have a system in place, supposedly, there is no commitment about how they will operate that system to help mitigate the impacts we saw back in January."

Shortly after lunch on Jan. 25, a blue haze started to appear in the air across the Kanawha Valley. Residents called emergency officials to complain about a strange odor, and questioned whether there had been a major chemical leak. County officials began calling area plants, but none reported having any unusual releases or operating problems.

For hours, residents wondered if it was safe to walk back from lunch, drive across town to buy groceries, or pick up their kids from school.

Not until early evening did anyone figure out where the blue haze was coming from. DEP inspectors, dispatched over the Valley in a helicopter, tracked it down to a pollution plume from the Amos plant, just across the Kanawha River from Poca, northwest from downtown Charleston.

No injuries or illnesses were reported. But regulators and public health officials took no samples to see how much sulfuric acid was in the Valley's air.

AEP officials said nothing unusual happened at their plant that day. They blamed the blue haze on an unusually strong weather event that trapped normal pollution in the Valley.

In a detailed report finalized last month, DEP officials concluded that "a preponderance of the evidence" shows Amos emissions were "a major contributor to the haze problem" once the weather inversion occurred.

DEP officials believe that the weather conditions transformed sulfuric acid vapors from the power plant into an aerosol, creating the blue mist.

Burning coal with sulfur in it produces sulfur dioxide. Inside plant stacks, some of that sulfur dioxide is converted to sulfur trioxide. When the sulfur trioxide exits the stack, it reacts with moisture in the air to form sulfuric acid.

Over the last four years, AEP has added pollution control equipment called selective catalytic reduction units, or SCRs, to reduce Amos emissions of nitrogen oxides that contribute to smog. But the SCRs can also enhance the creation of sulfur trioxide, increasing the potential for sulfuric acid emissions.

In a notice of violation issued May 9, DEP said it measured a violation of federal air standards for particulate matter at a monitor at the South Charleston Public Library during January's blue haze incident.

DEP blamed the violation on "coal combustion pollutants," and said the John Amos plant is the source of 94 percent of the pollutants involved in the blue haze incident.

Also, DEP noted that estimated emissions of sulfuric acid from the Amos plant are far larger than the company had previously disclosed to regulators and the public.

New AEP emissions forms, filed in early March with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, put the maximum daily sulfuric acid emissions from Amos at about 32,500 pounds - which is nearly eight times the company's previous estimate.

In its four-page notice of violation, DEP alleged that the Amos emissions were "causing or contributing" to the federal air pollution violation and "causing statutory air pollution."

DEP has not sought fines and has not yet ordered AEP to take any particular actions, except to respond to the notice of violation within 30 days.

On June 6, AEP lawyer Edward G. Kropp sent a 13-page response that argued that the power company had done nothing wrong.

Kropp said there were no violations of federal air standards, and that pollution on Jan. 25 "did not reach any levels that would result in injury to human health or interfere with the enjoyment of property."

Also on June 6, another AEP lawyer, Kathy Beckett, appealed the DEP notice of violation to the state Air Quality Board.

DEP spokeswoman Kathy Cosco said that the notice of violation is not really an action that can be appealed to the board. AEP and DEP are working on an agreement to dismiss the appeal, Cosco said.

The next step for DEP is to try to negotiate a deal with AEP "to address how to resolve the alleged violations." Often, "there are financial settlements that arise from those discussions," Cosco said.

Reach Ken Ward Jr. at kw...@wvgazette.com or 348-1702.