NSW grants Vales Point coal plant further five-year exemption from emissions limit
The New South Wales environmental regulator has granted the Vales Point power station on the Central Coast another five-year exemption from state air-quality regulations.
Environment groups claim the decision will see the power station continue to contribute to respiratory illnesses in children.
Under air-quality regulations, power stations are required to limit their emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx).
A NSW upper house committee this year called for those regulations to be made stricter for coal-fired power stations, noting Australia was lagging behind other countries in the limits set on air pollution.
Since 2012, Vales Point has been granted exemptions every five years that allow it to exceed the current legal limit.
In a decision on Wednesday, the NSW Environment Protection Authority granted its third such exemption to Delta Electricity, the operator of Vales Point.
The exemption tightens previous licence conditions but still permits the station to emit up to 850mg of nitrogen oxides per cubic metre 99% of the time. For 1% of the time it can exceed that and emit up to 980mg a cubic metre.
Without this variation, the maximum the station would ever be permitted to emit is 800mg a cubic metre.
The new limits represent a 23% and 35% reduction, respectively, on what had been granted under previous exemptions.
In addition, Vales Point will be required to install a new air monitoring station at Wyee Point, prepare a NOx emission control feasibility study and a separate study on reducing sulphur oxide emissions, and complete a pollution reduction program by July next year.
The Nature Conservation Council of NSW said the EPA’s decision would not force the power station to reduce its pollution as the new limits reflected the business-as-usual NOx emissions for that site.
“The EPA decision will be a bitter disappointment for the Central Coast community, which had hoped participation in public consultation would result in real change,” the council’s acting chief executive, Jacqui Mumford, said.
“Instead, the EPA has locked in another five years of respiratory disease for the Central Coast community.”
Mumford said NOx emissions were a known contributor to respiratory illnesses such as asthma, including in children, and the EPA had missed an opportunity to make real change.
Ben Ewald, a GP and conjoint senior lecturer in the University of Newcastle’s school of medicine and public health, has done modelling that estimated coal-fired power stations contribute to asthma for 650 children in the Central Coast and Lake Macquarie region.
He said the latest exemption granted to Vales Point represented a slight “tightening of the envelope” but the health benefit would be small.
He said he would have preferred to see the site’s pollution levels brought into line with the Eraring power station in Lake Macquarie, which emitted lower levels of nitrogen oxides.
“The licence has been trimmed slightly but current pollution releases will continue at almost the same rate,” he said.
“The EPA has squandered this opportunity to improve the health of the surrounding community, especially [in] those children with asthma due to power station pollution.”
Delta Electricity said in a statement it welcomed the decision, which follows a 12-month process that included air modelling and public consultation.
The company’s secretary, Steve Gurney, has previously rejected remarks by the Nature Conservation Council and other environmental organisations about air quality as “incorrect and misleading” from “a collection of anti-coal activists with one objective, to shut down coal-fired power stations”.
The company’s statement said the upper limit of what was permitted under its licence had been reduced by one-third and was “120 mg/m3 lower than limits in place at newer stations such as Bayswater and Mt Piper”.
“Delta appreciates the scientific rigour applied by the EPA in the review, which should allay any community concerns regarding local air quality,” the company said.
It said the granting of the licence amendment “reinforces the scientific data that the Central Coast has the best air quality in the greater metropolitan region, with clear evidence that motor vehicles are by far the highest contributor to NOx readings at ground level in the region”.
The EPA said in a statement it had listened to community concerns and tightened the NOx limits in the Vales Point licence.
“Air quality in NSW is generally good by world standards and our assessment … shows that operating within these tighter limits will maintain good local air quality,” the EPA’s director of regulatory operations, Stephen Beaman, said.
Environmental groups have long called for tougher pollution standards and requirements for power stations to install controls, which Environmental Justice Australia said could cut toxic pollutants by more than 85%.
“Technology used widely around the world is proven to significantly reduce the risk of these toxic pollutants and should be used widely in Australia,” lawyer Charley Brumby-Rendell said.