Duck Creek Station
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Duck Creek Station is a coal-fired power station near Canton, Illinois.
Contents
- 1 Location
- 2 Plant Data
- 3 Retirement
- 4 Plant ownership
- 5 Emissions Data
- 6 Pollution controls
- 7 Death and disease attributable to fine particle pollution from Duck Creek
- 8 Coal Waste Sites
- 9 Duck Creek ranked 62nd on list of most polluting power plants in terms of coal waste
- 10 Articles and Resources
Location
Plant Data
- Owner: Ameren Energy Resources Generating Company
- Parent Company: Ameren
- Plant Nameplate Capacity: 441 MW (Megawatts)
- Units and In-Service Dates: 441 MW (1976)
- Location: 17751 North Cilco Rd., Canton, IL 61520
- GPS Coordinates: 40.465760,-89.984579
- Coal Consumption:
- Coal Source:
- Number of Employees:
- Unit Retirements: Unit is scheduled for retirement before the end of 2019
Retirement
On August 21, 2019, plant owner Vistra announced that the power plant will be retired before the end of 2019 if it is determined that the unit is not needed for network reliability. Vistra Energy said it needed to close the plant to meet the requirements of the recently approved revisions to the Multi-Pollutant Standard rule of the Illinois Pollution Control Board.[1]
Plant ownership
The plant was owned by Ameren, an Illinois power company. In mid-March 2013, Dynegy purchased three electric generating subsidiaries and five coal plants from Ameren, including Duck Creek Station.[2][3]
On April 9, 2018, Texas-based Vistra Energy, the parent company for TXU Energy and Luminant, announced it had completed its merger with Dynegy. Vistra Energy will be the name of the combined company moving forward.[4]
Emissions Data
- 2006 CO2 Emissions: 572,743 tons
- 2006 SO2 Emissions:
- 2006 SO2 Emissions per MWh:
- 2006 NOx Emissions:
- 2005 Mercury Emissions:
Pollution controls
At the end of 2009 it was announced that plant owner Ameren Energy Resources had spent $1 billion for the installation of scrubbers at two of its facilities, including the Duck Creek Station, to reduce nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide emissions.[5]
Death and disease attributable to fine particle pollution from Duck Creek
In 2010, Abt Associates issued a study commissioned by the Clean Air Task Force, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization, quantifying the deaths and other health effects attributable to fine particle pollution from coal-fired power plants.[6] Fine particle pollution consists of a complex mixture of soot, heavy metals, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides. Among these particles, the most dangerous are those less than 2.5 microns in diameter, which are so tiny that they can evade the lung's natural defenses, enter the bloodstream, and be transported to vital organs. Impacts are especially severe among the elderly, children, and those with respiratory disease. The study found that over 13,000 deaths and tens of thousands of cases of chronic bronchitis, acute bronchitis, asthma, congestive heart failure, acute myocardial infarction, dysrhythmia, ischemic heart disease, chronic lung disease, and pneumonia each year are attributable to fine particle pollution from U.S. coal plant emissions. These deaths and illnesses are major examples of coal's external costs, i.e. uncompensated harms inflicted upon the public at large. Low-income and minority populations are disproportionately impacted as well, due to the tendency of companies to avoid locating power plants upwind of affluent communities. To monetize the health impact of fine particle pollution from each coal plant, Abt assigned a value of $7,300,000 to each 2010 mortality, based on a range of government and private studies. Valuations of illnesses ranged from $52 for an asthma episode to $440,000 for a case of chronic bronchitis.[7]
Table 1: Death and disease attributable to fine particle pollution from Duck Creek Station
| Type of Impact | Annual Incidence | Valuation |
|---|---|---|
| Deaths | 17 | $120,000,000 |
| Heart attacks | 26 | $2,800,000 |
| Asthma attacks | 280 | $15,000 |
| Hospital admissions | 12 | $280,000 |
| Chronic bronchitis | 10 | $4,600,000 |
| Asthma ER visits | 18 | $7,000 |
Source: "Find Your Risk from Power Plant Pollution," Clean Air Task Force interactive table, accessed March 2011
Coal Waste Sites
Duck Creek ranked 62nd on list of most polluting power plants in terms of coal waste
In January 2009, Sue Sturgis of the Institute of Southern Studies compiled a list of the 100 most polluting coal plants in the United States in terms of coal combustion waste (CCW) stored in surface impoundments like the one involved in the TVA Kingston Fossil Plant coal ash spill.[8] The data came from the EPA's Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) for 2006, the most recent year available.[9]
Duck Creek Station ranked number 62 on the list, with 462,272 pounds of coal combustion waste released to surface impoundments in 2006.[8]
Articles and Resources
Sources
- ↑ "Vistra Energy to Close Four Illinois Power Plants," Vistra Energy, August 21, 2019
- ↑ Boshart, Glen. "Dynegy Bid to Buy Ameren's Merchant Plants Makes Its Way to FERC." SNL Power Daily with Market Report. April 18, 2013.
- ↑ Yeagle, Patrick. "Shell Game." Illinois Times. September 19, 2013
- ↑ "Vistra / Dynegy Merger," Vistra Energy website, accessed August 2018
- ↑ AER invests $1 billion in environmental upgrades in Illinois, TradingMarkets.com, accessed January 2010.
- ↑ "The Toll from Coal: An Updated Assessment of Death and Disease from America's Dirtiest Energy Source," Clean Air Task Force, September 2010.
- ↑ "Technical Support Document for the Powerplant Impact Estimator Software Tool," Prepared for the Clean Air Task Force by Abt Associates, July 2010
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Sue Sturgis, "Coal's ticking timebomb: Could disaster strike a coal ash dump near you?," Institute for Southern Studies, January 4, 2009.
- ↑ TRI Explorer, EPA, accessed January 2009.
- Existing Electric Generating Units in the United States, 2005, Energy Information Administration, accessed Jan. 2009.
- Environmental Integrity Project, "Dirty Kilowatts: America’s Most Polluting Power Plants", July 2007.
- Facility Registry System, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, accessed Jan. 2009.
- Carbon Monitoring for Action database, accessed Feb. 2009.
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