"N.J. Air Quality Takes a Hit"

"Power companies have been turning off pollution control equipment at coal-fired plants and allowing massive amounts of contaminants to escape through the stacks — a practice that is perfectly legal and saves the plants money but ends up contributing to chronic air and health issues in New Jersey.

Over the past decade, power companies in Eastern states spent hundreds of millions of dollars to install pollution control equipment to meet federal rules intended to improve air quality. But those companies have found it is cheaper to buy credits ­— allowances to emit a specified amount of pollutant — that let them pollute rather than operate the equipment.

As a result, some plants logged dramatic increases in nitrogen oxide emissions between 2009 and 2013 — even though the facilities have equipment that could capture up to 90 percent of the pollutant. FirstEnergy’s Harrison plant in West Virginia, for instance, emitted nearly 18,700 tons of nitrogen oxide in 2013, a nearly threefold increase from 2009. The Keystone plant in Pennsylvania, co-owned by Exelon and New Jersey-based PSEG Power, released nearly 16,650 tons of the pollutant in 2013, up about 350 percent from 2009."

James M. O’Neill reports for the Bergen Record May 17, 2015.