LANSING—Ten local, state, regional and national public interest groups today formally petitioned Michigan to begin regulating emissions of CO2 from coal-burning electric power plants.  The petition is supported by this spring’s landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing the federal government to declare carbon dioxide a pollutant because it contributes to global warming.

The groups also requested that the state declare a moratorium on building new plants or expanding existing ones until the new rules are in place. Coal-burning power plants collectively are the nation’s largest emitters of CO2.

The request was filed with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality on the eve of what, if unchecked, could become a massive, unprecedented “coal rush” in Michigan. In the past year, a number of in-state and out-of-state energy companies announced proposals for at least five new coal-powered plants in the state—in Rogers City, Midland, Alma, Bay City, and Manistee.

The push to build the facilities comes as the state struggles to replace its once-prosperous manufacturing base with high-tech jobs employing new, 21st-century technology. The public interest groups object to the plants because their CO2 or greenhouse gas emissions would accelerate global warming, which is already harming Michigan’s economy and quality of life.

The groups say that, before the state allows additional power generation using coal, it should first institute aggressive, statewide conservation and energy efficiency programs that could eliminate the need for the coal plants.

“If Michigan concentrated on energy efficiency and renewable power sources such as wind turbines, solar panels, and biomass systems, we would help combat climate change and produce many, many high-quality jobs,” said Anne Woiwode, director of the Michigan Chapter Sierra Club, one of the groups that signed the petition. “A new wave of coal plants will add at least 24 million more tons of CO2 into our skies each year and create only a few jobs.”

This is the second formal request for regulating CO2 to go to the MDEQ. A Presque Isle County-based group, Citizens for Environmental Inquiry (CEI), filed the first one in late August as part of its effort to stop a proposed coal plant slated for Rogers City. Like the petition filed today, the request from CEI asked the MDEQ to freeze applications for modifying existing coal plants or building new ones until the state writes new CO2 regulations.

“Our local governments rushed through their approval of the Rogers City proposal,” said retired Circuit Court Judge Joseph P. Swallow of CEI, which is a signatory to today’s filing. “If the DEQ does not act, our community will be stuck with still more old, polluting technology, just a few new jobs, and a missed opportunity to protect the environment and rebuild our local economy in a much more sustainable way.”
 
Currently, neither the U.S. government nor the State of Michigan regulates CO2, the most common global warming or greenhouse gas. But on April 2, 2007, in response to a case brought by the State of Massachusetts against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that carbon dioxide is indeed an air pollutant because it is a major cause of global warming. This historic decision is now generating intense legal pressure on the E.P.A. from many quarters to treat CO2 as a pollutant.

The petition filed with the MDEQ in Lansing today draws on that court decision as well as on state and federal law to make the case that the state must now regulate CO2 as an air pollutant.

The organizations assert that they have standing to file the petition because, unabated, CO2 emissions will do significant harm to the state. Those harms include sharply lower Great Lakes water levels, drastic reductions in lake-based transportation and commerce, significant financial losses for the tourism industry, and increased severe weather, droughts, and heat waves. These effects, the petition asserts, will directly and significantly harm the health and well being of Michigan’s residents, the state’s economy, and its natural resources.

For example, ski resort operators in northern Michigan report that the average length of the winter season has shrunk at least a week in recent years, from 127 days in the 1980s to 115-120 days in this decade.

“When I first came here in 1985 we had more natural snow earlier in the season,” said Jim MacInnes, the general manager and chief executive officer of Crystal Mountain, which attracts thousands of skiers each year to its slopes in Benzie County. “It got cold earlier in the season. Normally we’d be open in the first week of December. Now it’s usually a week or two later.”

The petition also points out that the additional CO2 emissions from the five newly proposed plants would wipe out the gains in greenhouse gas reductions that various state agencies, private companies, and educational institutions in Michigan are just now beginning to accomplish.

“If the governor is serious—and we remain hopeful that she is—then her administration, backed by the full force of both federal and state law, should regulate emissions of CO2 and encourage energy efficiency and non-polluting sources of power,” said Lana Pollack, executive director of the Michigan Environmental Council, a coalition of more than 70 citizen groups.

The organizations that filed the formal petition with the MDEQ today are Citizens for Environmental Inquiry, Clean Water Action, Environment Michigan Research and Policy Center, Environmental Law and Policy Center of the Midwest (Chicago), Lone Tree Council, Michigan Environmental Council, Michigan Land Use Institute, Michigan League of Conservation Voters Education Fund, Midlandcares, Northern Michigan Environmental Action Council, and the Sierra Club.

To request a copy of the petition, contact Anne Woiwode at Anne.Woiwode@sierraclub.org or Hugh McDiarmid Jr. at hugh@environmentalcouncil.org

Contact:
Anne Woiwode, Sierra Club: 517-974-2112
Jim Dulzo, Michigan Land Use Institute: 313-598-8106
Judge Joseph P. Swallow, Citizens for Environmental Inquiry: 989-595-2967
Lana Pollack, Michigan Environmental Council: 517-487-9539

###