Coal plants are dirty—but one coal plant in North Carolina is exceptionally nasty. The CPI plant in Roxboro burns coal, and shreds tires and creosote-railroad ties. Not surprisingly, the CPI plant generates toxic air pollution that has violated air-quality standards for over a decade.
Located on the northern edge of Roxboro, near a community where most families are people of color, CPI Roxboro emits as much sulfur dioxide as a much larger coal-fired power plant. Along with Duke Energy’s nearby Mayo and Roxboro coal power plants, it is one of the largest and filthiest air polluters in the region. The Roxboro community has a higher energy burden than the national average, and most of its residents are African American.
“I was alarmed to learn about the toxic air pollution coming from that coal plant,” said Mary Tucker, a long-time Sierra Club member who has lived in Roxboro for 23 years. She had read about studies linking poor air quality with many serious health conditions, including asthma, cancer, and even an increased risk of death from COVID-19.
Fortunately, Tucker and the rest of Roxboro can breathe a sigh of relief: The CPI coal plant is closing, thanks to the work of the Sierra Club and its partners. Under the order signed by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) and CPI, the coal plant must shut down by March 2021, meet a stricter limit for harmful sulfur dioxide emissions until it closes, and pay a $389,000 penalty for its air pollution violations.
“After more than a decade of unlawful toxic emissions, families in Roxboro will finally get to breathe cleaner air,” said Dave Rogers, the southeast deputy regional director for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign.
CPI Roxboro is the 316th coal plant that the Beyond Coal Campaign has helped close since 2010.
The closure of the CPI coal plant will end more than a decade of unlawful pollution. The coal plant avoided appropriate Clean Air Act permitting for a 2008 retrofit that let it burn more tire waste, significantly increasing the plant’s sulfur dioxide pollution. The facility did not even begin monitoring its pollution until 2015, years after the project was completed.
When the monitoring revealed how drastically the retrofit had increased the plant’s emissions, CPI claimed that the emissions increases were unrelated to the retrofit and therefore did not trigger more stringent pollution limits. In July 2019, North Carolina DEQ initially proposed a permit that would have accepted the company’s claim and let the plant continue avoiding sulfur dioxide controls required by the Clean Air Act.
“At that point, it looked like the CPI coal plant was going to be allowed to continue violating air-quality standards and damaging the health of the Roxboro community,” Rogers said.
Fortunately, the Sierra Club, Southern Environmental Law Center, and Clean Air Carolina decided to keep digging. They uncovered North Carolina DEQ documents which showed that the coal plant’s increased emissions resulted directly from the retrofit and could not evade the required pollution controls.
Soon after, North Carolina DEQ reversed course and began an enforcement action against CPI that culminated in the plant’s closure and $389,000 penalty.
“I can breathe easier knowing this coal plant is closing,” Tucker said.
