Wabash River Generating Station

{{#badges: CoalSwarm}} Wabash River Generating Station was a six-unit coal-fired power station owned and operated by Duke Energy near Terre Haute, Indiana. Unit 1A was retrofitted in 1995 as an IGCC plant.

Units 2-5 were retired in April 2016, and unit 1 (112.5 MW) in May 2016.

Duke decided against converting its unit 6 to run on gas, and retired it in December 2016. Wabash Valley Power Association will keep its coal-gasification unit 1A (192 MW) at the river station online.

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Background

Wabash River was built by Public Service Indiana, and ultimately acquired by Duke Energy. The plant's first six units were built in the 1950-50s. Unit 1 was retrofitted in 1995 as an IGCC plant.

IGCC plant

IGCC retrofit

The Wabash River Coal Gasification Repowering Project was built at the site of the Wabash plant, and was a retrofit of unit 1. The IGCC plant was one of two demonstrations of integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) technology in the United States. It was selected by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) in September of 1991 as a Demonstration Project for the Clean Coal Technology (CCT) Program. Construction began in July 1993, followed by operational startup in November 1995 and commercial operation in December 1999. Total cost of the project was $438 million; DOE provided $219 million (50%) of the total cost.

Sale of unit 1

In December 2006, Duke Energy Indiana agreed to sell unit 1 of its Wabash River Power Station to the Wabash Valley Power Association (WVPA) for $110-120 million. The sale includes Unit 1’s 192-megawatt gas turbine and 112.5-megawatt steam turbine. Unit 1 produces electricity using synthesis gas from a coal gasification plant adjacent to Duke Energy’s Wabash River Station. When the synthesis gas is unavailable, the unit can also run on natural gas.

Although units 1-6 of the power station were closed in 2016, Wabash Valley Power Association said it will keep its coal-gasification unit 1A at the river station online.

Retirements

Duke ordered to shut down three coal-fired units at Wabash River plant

On May 29, 2009, U.S. District Judge Larry J. McKinney ordered Duke Energy to shut down three units of the Wabash River Generating Station for violations of the federal Clean Air Act. In 2008, a jury found that Duke-owned Cinergy had modified the facilities without installing best-available pollution control technology. In his ruling, Judge McKinney cited increased sulfur dioxide emissions from the units and gave a deadline of September 30, 2009 for closing them. Duke's Chief Legal Officer Marc Manly said the company was disappointed with the court's decision to "accelerate the shutdown." The units, which supply 39 percent of the station's power, were slated to be taken off line in 2012.

An appeals court overturned that order in 2010, allowing Duke Energy to restart the units.

All units to retire

In Sep. 2011, Duke Energy said it is considering shutting down several of the six units at Wabash River Station, in expectation of impending coal regulations.

Plant Data

• Owner: PSI Energy Inc.
• Parent Company: Duke Energy
• Plant Nameplate Capacity: 1,165 MW
• Units and In-Service Dates: 112.5 MW (1953 - retrofitted to IGCC in 1995), 112.5 MW (1953), 123 MW (1954), 113 MW (1955), 125 MW (1956), 387 MW (1968), 192 MW (1995)
• Location: 450 Bolton Rd., Terre Haute, IN 47801
• GPS Coordinates: 39.530583, -87.422611
• Coal Consumption:
• Coal Source:
• Number of Employees:

Emissions Data

• 2006 CO₂ Emissions: 5,708,664 tons
• 2006 SO₂ Emissions: 58,793 tons
• 2006 NO_x Emissions: 8,454 tons
• 2005 Mercury Emissions: 185 lb.

Death and disease attributable to fine particle pollution from Wabash River

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. 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.

Table 1: Death and disease attributable to fine particle pollution from Wabash River Generating Station

Type of Impact	Annual Incidence	Valuation
Deaths	74	$540,000,000
Heart attacks	110	$12,000,000
Asthma attacks	1,200	$64,000
Hospital admissions	53	$1,200,000
Chronic bronchitis	45	$20,000,000
Asthma ER visits	77	$28,000

Source: "Find Your Risk from Power Plant Pollution," Clean Air Task Force interactive table, accessed March 2011

Coal Waste Sites

• Wabash River Generating Station Primary Ash Pond Cell A
• Wabash River Generating Station Primary Ash Pond Cell B
• Wabash River Generating Station Secondary Ash Pond
• Wabash River Generating Station South Ash Pond

Wabash River ranked 38th 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. The data came from the EPA's Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) for 2006, the most recent year available.

Wabash River Generating Station ranked number 38 on the list, with 951,610 pounds of coal combustion waste released to surface impoundments in 2006.

Toxic Waste Data

• Arsenic Waste: 53,550 pounds
  • Air Release: 1,220 pounds
  • Water Release (Wabash River): 3,030 pounds
  • Land Release (Surface Impoundment): 49,300 pounds
• Chromium Waste: 75,349 pounds
  • Air Release: 787 pounds
  • Water Release (Wabash River): 162 pounds
  • Land Release (Surface Impoundment): 73,400 pounds
• Dioxin Waste: .3291 grams
  • Air Release: .3291 grams
• Lead Waste: 75,621.7 pounds
  • Air Release: 1,557 pounds
  • Land Release (Surface Impoundment): 74,063 pounds
• Nickel Waste: 128,479 pounds
  • Air Release: 1,046 pounds
  • Water Release (Wabash River): 432 pounds
  • Land Release (Surface Impoundment): 127,000 pounds

Accidents and Negligence

• February 13, 2007
  • A petroleum project began to pollute the Wabash River and it was traced back to a leak of turbine oil from one of the generation stations.
  • The EPA made PSI Energy sign a statement taking full responsibility for the leak.
  • The earliest assessments are that there was a pinhole leak in the tank coupled with a failure of the system to make note of such a leak and issue a warning.
• February 15, 2007
  • Two workers were injured when they opened a mill door they thought was sealed and an intense puff of coal ash, dust, and hot air pushed them back.
  • One worker suffered scrapes, abrasions, and burns on his arm. Another received treatment for fractures around his eye from the door hitting him in the head.
• April 28, 2008
  • Two workers were killed as they were tightening bolts on a gasification unit opening.
  • The workers were up nearly 150 feet in the air when the opening exploded outward. No one else was injured in the accident.
  • According to Wabash River Power, this is the first fatality to occur in the plant since it opened in 1995.

Litigation and Controversy

• 1995-Present
  • Wabash River Generating Facility is one of only two plants in the country that, as of the 2003 publication of the referenced article, had been fitted with IGCC (Integrated Combined Cycle Gasification Technology) with tradename E-Gas
  • While the Wabash plant has some of the highest CO2 emissions of any plant in the country, the SO2 emissions are 1/10th of the Clean Air Act standards, they have extremely low NOX emissions, and almost no particle emissions.

Articles and Resources

Sources

• 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.

Related SourceWatch Articles

• Existing U.S. Coal Plants
• Indiana and coal
• Duke Energy
• United States and coal
• Global warming
• Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC)