Holding polluters accountable! Victory in the courts!

Clean Wisconsin exposes utility knowingly, illegally, withheld information

Becky Weber

Clean Wisconsin is pleased to announce a victory in the courts!  For the past few months, we've been fighting the request by Wisconsin Electric (Wepco) to install pollution control equipment on their Oak Creek coal fired power plant.  (Although installing pollution controls sounds like a good idea, it's not a good idea to keep old, inefficient coal plants running when they should be retired.)

Clean Wisconsin hired experts to analyze whether the pollution controls proposed by Wepco would actually be good enough to comply with environmental regulations, including Wisconsin's revised mercury rule. We also analyzed all the other costs associated with keeping these old plants running, which amounted to millions more dollars than Wepco accounted for. During this process, we requested information from the company to do this analysis because Wepco is required to provide all studies and reports they used to make their decision to keep the old units running and we needed this information to do our analysis.

Wepco didn't give us the studies they used and our experts spent many hours trying to unravel the information.  However, after the fact, we did indeed find out that the information we requested existed and Wepco knowingly, illegally, withheld this information from us. 

Therefore, we asked the PSC to sanction Wepco for withholding this information.  Recently, the PSC announced they agreed with us and ordered Wepco to compensate our expert and attorney for all the extra time they spent.

This is a major victory for Wisconsin, not only for this particular lawsuit, but also because it exposes the kinds of maneuvers polluters attempt to get away with.  Thanks to your support, Clean Wisconsin is able to both continue this fight with Wepco but also continue to "fight the good fight" and not allow corporate polluters to get away with this type of illegal activity. 

Background on the case:

• Wisconsin Electric is asking for $830 million to install pollution control equipment on a fifty year old power plant (Oak Creek), so they can keep it running another 20 years.
• Although installing pollution controls sounds like a good idea, it's not a good idea to keep old, inefficient coal plants running when they should be retired.
• Our position has been that instead of spending millions to keep old coal plants running, they should invest in clean energy solutions. Rather than spending millions to duct tape old, dirty units to keep them limping along another 20 years, they should instead invest ratepayer money in technology that's not a detriment to our health and the environment.