State accused of greenwashing over environmental award for Lake Erie coal plant

Environmental groups say that a state award given routinely to some of the most highly polluting companies in Michigan is an example of “greenwashing” — defined as “the deceptive use of green PR or green marketing in order to promote a misleading perception that a company’s policies or products (such as goods or services) are environmentally friendly.”

A recent study by the nonprofit Clean Air Task Force found that air pollution from CMS Energy’s 57 year old J.R. Whiting coal plant in Monroe causes 40 deaths a year as well as 61 heart attacks, over 600 asthma attacks, and about 35 emergency room visits for asthma.

In a press release and public ceremony this week, however, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment — the agency in charge of enforcing air quality standards — recognized the plant as a Neighborhood Environmental Partner.

DNRE Director Rebecca Humphries praised the coal-burning facility for working with the Monroe Lotus Garden Club to propagate, transplant and protect the endangered American Lotus at the plant site and for collaborating with local scouting groups to remove more than 6 cubic yards of trash from a 2 mile long stretch of Lake Erie.

The award “demonstrates the ongoing commitment Consumers Energy and its employees have to being good environmental stewards and neighbors,“ according to Consumers Energy vice president Jack Hanson.

Environmental groups and others, though, are criticizing it as state-sponsored greenwash of one of Michigan’s most environmentally destructive enterprises.

“According to U.S. EPA’s Clean Air Markets Database, the J.R. Whiting facility in 2008 emitted approximately 9,200 tons of sulfur dioxide and 3,000 tons of nitrogen oxides,” said Shannon Fisk, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “[T]he Whiting facility lacks modern pollution controls for sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions.”

In 2007 EPA cited the Whiting plant for violating the Clean Air Act by exceeding allowable air pollution limits.

By giving CMS Energy an environmental award for lotus cultivation the state is providing cover for a highly polluting company, said Susan Harley, policy director for Michigan Clean Water Action.

Harley said that the DNRE budget has been slashed by 75 percent in the last decade, making it difficult for regulators to enforce environmental laws. DNRE is under pressure to be seen as working with businesses, she said, but the way to protect the economy is to protect the environment.

“We would like to see CMS to call themselves an environmental champion after they have moved away from coal in favor of renewable energy,“ she said. “We would like to see them go beyond state minimal requirements for renewable energy.”

“It does crack me up in a way,” Thomas P. Lyon, Dow Professor of Sustainable Science, Technology and Commerce at University of Michigan, said after reviewing the state’s Neighborhood Environmental Partners program. “To me it goes under the category of greenwashing.”

Lyon has written extensively on corporate greenwashing which he defines as, “presenting positive information about your environmental performance without giving the whole story.”

Getting awards for picking up trash without bothering to tell people about your air emissions is an example of greenwashing, he said. “The question is why would the government promote something like this?”

“They may be hoping it will increase dialog, but that is a minimal accomplishment, “ he said. “The requirements are not stringent enough to really be a credible award.”

A DNRE PowerPoint presentation on the Neighborhood Environmental Partner program touts the benefits to businesses that chose to participate in small scale neighborhood cleanup projects as including “recognition and good publicity,” “possible marketing campaign,“ and “improved relations with neighbors.”

The dept. also promises participating businesses that it will issue press releases announcing awards and send letters announcing the award to local municipalities and chambers of commerce.

The benefits to neighbors, the state says, include “confidence in local businesses.”

Other recent NEP award recipients include Detroit Edison’s River Rouge and Belle River power plants, and Dow Corning’s Midland site, which are all cited by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for ongoing air quality violations.

“The technology exists to actually merit an environmental award if they were to install modern pollution controls,“ said Jonathan Banks, federal policy coordinator for the Clean Air Task Force. “That power plant does not have modern pollution controls for the pollution that is causing these health impacts.”

“There is a technology called scrubbers — flue gas desulphurization — it can reduce fine particulate pollution by 85-95 percent. Many other companies have installed scrubbers.”

Air quality is not the only environmental concern linked to the Whiting plant.

Jeff Stant is project director for the coal combustion waste initiative of the Environmental Integrity Project, which recently published a
report that detailed environmental contamination associated with coal ash waste dumps at power plants.

Stant said that in the 1980s scientists with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service found that selenium and other toxins from Whiting’s coal ash dumps had poisoned aquatic life in adjacent Lake Erie.

“Young, embryonic stages of insect life and fish that were near those pond discharges were in trouble,” he said, but these ecological damages were ignored by regulators.

“The overall harmfulness of coal ash waste is not being recognized,“ he said. “The feds have left it to the states and Michigan has not established adequate regulation.”

Stant was not impressed by CMS Energy’s claim that the presence of American Lotus flowers near its plant indicates a healthy local ecosystem.

“I’ve seen lily pads and lotus growing in contaminated water before,” he said. “Just because plants might be growing next to a coal ash pile, doesn’t mean that the coal ash is innocuous.”