The Amos Plant is a coal-fired power station owned and operated by American Electric Power near Winfield, West Virginia.
The plant is located between West Virginia Route 817 (Winfield Road) and the Kanawha River.
A worker was crushed between a railroad car containing a shipment of coal and a steel retaining wall.
A contracted worker fell to his death while installing pollution control equipment. According to OSHA, the metal decking he was walking on was not secured properly.
An employee working at the Amos plant died when he fell 25 feet down a vertical duct while cleaning them.
OSHA fined the AEP contractor $6,300 for failing to adequately train employees on avoiding safety hazards while at work.
Mid-day, residents of the Kanawha Valley discovered a "blue haze" that smelled strongly of chlorine settling over the valley. Once the DEP got word, they called around to area plants to make sure there wasn't a gas leak. All reports came back normal.
Helicopter flyovers found the haze to be most concentrated over the John Amos plant, though there was nothing internally malfunctioning.
A particularly thick temperature inversion that day (cold air settling below warm air instead of the other way around) caused air pollutants to be trapped below the warm air, which functions as a lid.
However, this incident spurred the DEP to begin examining the John Amos plant and how the plant intends to deal with their extreme sulfuric acid emissions, caused by installing selective catalytic reduction united (SCRs) to control and reduce their nitrogen oxide emissions. Sulfur dioxide (which can potentially become sulfuric acid) is one of the drawbacks to the SCRs.
The residents of the valley claimed they smelled chlorine, which confused those involved in the investigation. A report released in May determined that the strange weather conditions turned the sulfuric acid emissions into an aerosol which created the smoky blue look.
At least the fourth "blue haze" incident since January 25 was reported. It was a more widespread incident and not as easily linked to the Amos plant.
A man fell from a ladder or scaffolding while working with a large refurbishment crew near the precipitators that remove the fly ash from the generators. The crew was installing a new scrubber into the unit.
The Department of Environmental Protection discovered that the AEP estimates on sulfuric acid emissions could have been underwritten by as much as four times the actual emissions rate.
The DEP is investigating whether this increase in emission rate might come from AEP's efforts to install equipment that controls for other emissions.
Currently, there are no limits on sulfuric acid emissions, even though repeated exposure to concentrated amounts can cause respiratory problems, such as asthma in children, as well as burn the mouth, eyes, and throat.
AEP claims that they are merely discovering new and better ways to report accurate numbers to the DEP. They do not believe that these are increasing numbers, simply more accurate.
A press release by the Department of Environmental Protection showed that a review of fly ash dam inspection records show that most dams in West Virginia have not been visited by a federal inspector in five years or more, some have not been visited in 20.
While 14 of West Virginia's 16 coal dams have been internally inspected by the company's engineers in the last two years, only 2 of the 16 were state inspected in the last two years, and six have not been inspected by the state in over a decade.
The John Amos plant was included in this list, as it has not been inspected by the state in at least 10 years.
West Virginia residents are beginning to strongly oppose a proposed American Electric Power transmission line to bring more power to New Jersey, where they pay more per kilowatt than in West Virginia.
Residents are opposing the line not only because a local company is trying to make extra money by outsourcing the in-state produced energy and sending it out, but because many properties will be affected by the towers necessary to build such a line.
On October 9, 2007 the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. EPA announced that American Electric Power (AEP) agreed to pay a $15 million fine and spend $60 million on projects to mitigate the adverse effects of its past emissions. Of that $60 million, the EPA announced that it would be split 60%/40% between the United States and the various settling states. The company agreed to cut 813,000 tons of air pollutants each year at an cost of more than $4.6 billion.
It was the largest environmental enforcement settlement in U.S. history. AEP will install pollution control equipment to reduce and capture sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxide (NOx). The settlement resolved a lawsuit filed against AEP in 1999 for violating the New Source Review of the Clean Air Act. A coalition of eight states and 13 citizen and environmental groups joined the U.S. government in the settlement. A total of 16 plants located in five states were impacted.
American Electric installed three "scrubbers" at its largest power-generating unit at its John Amos Plant in West Virginia. The total cost of the project is estimated to be $1.04 billion.
In Feb. 2011, Appalachian Power said the scrubber upgrades were complete.
↑ Carbon Monitoring for Action: John Amos Plant Data. Center for Global Democracy.
↑ Criteria Air Pollutants: John Amos Plant Data. Environmental Protection Agency.
↑ Environmental Protection Agency. Toxic Release Inventory: John Amos Plant Data. Right to Know Network.
↑ American Electric Power v. Honorable Lyne Ranson. Supreme Court of West Virginia (September, 1993).
↑ Victim of John Amos Accident Indentified as South Carolina Man. Charleston Daily Mail (September 23, 2008).
↑ This Time, Blue Haze More Widespread. Charleston Gazette (July 30, 2008).
↑ Worker Dies After Fall at AEP's John Amos Plant. West Virginia Gazette (September 23, 2008).
↑ Ken Ward, Jr. (February 17, 2008). Amos Plant Emitting More Than Reported. Charleston Gazette.
↑ Ken Ward, Jr. (January 9, 2009). West Virginia Coal-Ash Dams Seldom Inspected, DEP Says. Charleston Gazette.
↑ Naomi Smoot (February 10, 2009). P.A.T.H Hearing Draws Crowd. The Journal.
↑ "Appalachian Power completes $2B in environmental investments" AP Press, Feb. 19, 2011.
↑ 20.0 20.1 Sue Sturgis, "Coal's ticking timebomb: Could disaster strike a coal ash dump near you?," Institute for Southern Studies, January 4, 2009.
This page was last edited on 25 October 2017, at 21:58.