Clean Up Wyman Station

Statement by Brownie Carson, NRCM Executive Director

We are here today to announce that more than 1,000 Maine people from 230 towns support cleaning up the Wyman Station power plant – Maine’s largest single source of air pollution. These people come from nearly half the towns in Maine, and they are speaking out today for clean air.

Over the past 40 years, Wyman Station has been emitting thousands of tons of air pollution annually into Maine’s air.

During the past four years, total emissions of the harmful pollutant nitrogen oxides have increased each and every year at Wyman Station, for a total increase of 257% since 1996.

The increased emissions of nitrogen oxides during 1999 alone — as compared to 1998 levels — was the equivalent of putting an additional 65,000 cars onto Maine’s roads.

Why does this matter? Because nitrogen oxides combine with other air pollutants to form ozone smog – which poses a significant threat to our children, senior citizens, and people with respiratory difficulties.

Ozone smog is having an affect all the way to Acadia National Park – which experiences some of the highest ozone levels in the eastern United States.

Today is the final day for public comments to the Board of Environmental Protection with regard to a plan for reducing nitrogen oxide pollution at Wyman Station.

To the owners of the Wyman Station power plant, we have a simple message: Enough if Enough! Clean up this dirty power plant now! Stop polluting our air!

The 1,043 Maine people who are submitting public comments today also have a simple message to the Board of Environmental Protection: Thank you for your preliminary vote in support of clean air for the people of Maine. Thank you for opposing an “air pollution credit-trading scheme” that would have traded away the public health of Maine people. And, most importantly, please hold firm on your position: Don’t let Wyman’s out-of-state owners avoid making the clean-up investments necessary to protect our health and our environment.

The Environmental Protection Agency says that Wyman can be cost-effectively cleaned up using conventional, off-the-shelf technology. Doing so would deliver an 81% percent reduction in nitrogen oxide pollution from Wyman. That’s what is needed. That’s what the people of Maine deserve. We urge the Board of Environmental Protection to ensure that that’s what happens.