EDITORIAL: Coal lives on as an environmental zombie

July 16 should be declared a Port Washington holiday celebrated annually with a community gathering in Coal Dock Park, short speeches by the mayor and a visiting clean-air advocate, a few tunes by the City Band and maybe a brats-and-beer stand. July 16 was the day in 2005 when the power plant on the city’s lakefront began generating electricity with natural gas, ending a 70-year span of air and water pollution by the dirtiest of all fossil fuels.

Smoke from the power plant stacks (as many as five of them at one point) in its coal-fired era plumed over the city and rained down mercury and other heavy metals and chemicals on the land and the lake, while soot blown off of the mountainous coal piles on what is now Coal Dock Park carried the same dangerous pollutants across the area at ground level.

The pollution was visible. Houses and other buildings took on a sooty gray tinge. Rust stains appeared on boats in the harbor after periodic episodes of concentrated heavy metal fallout.

The We Energies Port Washington generating station is one of at least 150 former coal-burning power plants in the U.S. that have been converted to gas or replaced by solar and wind generated electricity. One reason is obvious, another may be surprising.

Coal is well known to be a double threat, a major contributor to both the greenhouse gases warming the earth and to human diseases. At the same time, it now costs more than power from renewable energy sources. 

Solar and wind power produce more electricity in the U.S. than coal. About half of the coal plants in the country have been shut down. The remaining plants are an average of 53 years old.

All of which begs the question: Why is the Trump administration going to extraordinary lengths to encourage, in some instances even require, coal-fired power plants to stay in operation? 

The answer seems to be that it is part of a political agenda aimed at quashing the growth of renewable energy. The latest action item in that agenda is so inimicable to the well-being of humans and their environment that 16 states, including Wisconsin, plus three major cities and a Texas county have joined in a lawsuit to stop it.

The suit is in response to a decision by the Environmental Protection Agency to weaken restrictions on the toxic pollution released by power plants. In February, EPA officials, in an event staged at a coal-burning power plant in Kentucky, announced that the agency would no longer enforce power plant pollution limits that were enacted in 2024.

This followed government sops to the coal mining industry and power plant operators that subsidized coal pollution at taxpayer expense. In September, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) authorized a $625 million subsidy for owners of old coal-burning plants. 

Before that, the DOE forced a Michigan coal plant to keep operating after its planned retirement date, propping up the operation with $29 million in the first five weeks.

The Department of Interior made its contribution to coal pollution by offering 13 million acres of public lands to be leased for coal mining.

The administration pushes coal relentlessly while knowing it is an environmental scourge. The DOE’s own U.S. Energy Information Administration publishes the grim facts about the effects of its emissions of mercury, sulfur dioxide, various other chemicals and particulate matter on its website. These pollutants threaten humans as the cause of lung disease, heart attacks, cancer and neurological impairment, according to the government agency. The health risk factors exist not only in coal-polluted air, but also in water contaminated with mercury delivered as acid rain. People ingest it by eating fish from these waters, including the Great Lakes.

Since that important day 21 years ago when the Port Washington power plant replaced coal with natural gas, the air over Ozaukee County has been markedly cleaner, though it still cannot escape all of the effects of burning coal to make electricity. 

On summer days with a typical southeast sea breeze, polluted air from the Oak Creek coal-fired power plant and other sources is carried up the Lake Michigan coast. When the wind shifts to the north, emissions from Alliant Energy’s Edgewater power plant in Sheboygan migrate south, sometimes visible as a yellow smear on the sky over Lake Michigan.

Thanks to that ancient power plant, fed by long coal trains that rumble through Port Washington nightly, Sheboygan is rated 28th out of 228 cities that have the worst ozone (harmful gas that can result from power plant emissions) in the country by the American Lung Association. The organization gives Sheboygan County an “F” for air quality.

The 95-year-old Sheboygan plant was to be shut down last year. Now Alliant says that won’t happen until 2028 at the earliest. The demand for every available watt of electricity for data centers is a likely factor.

The toughened pollution standards adopted by EPA in 2024 resulted in less dangerous emissions from coal-fired power plants and the expense of meeting those standards pressured utilities to find coal alternatives. Then those standards were dumped like so much coal fly ash into an EPA wastebasket.

A win by the states and local governments suing to overturn that insult to good governance will be a win for everyone who breathes.