KEAAU, Hawaii >> The Sierra Club is asking Hawaii Electric Light Co. to install updated pollution control equipment on its 15.5-megawatt, oil-burning power plant at Keaau south of Hilo "or scrap the outdated facility altogether." Sierra Club takes aim
at Keaau power plantBy Rod Thompson
rthompson@starbulletin.comHELCO President Warren Lee said there is no need for such equipment. "We are way under existing requirements," he said.
The state Department of Health took public testimony last night on an air quality permit for the three-decade-old power plant.
Although operation of the plant is "grandfathered," a federal law passed in 1990 required stricter controls on such old plants nationwide.
HELCO received a permit for the plant last year, but the state mistakenly adopted the wrong version, said HELCO environmental scientist Barry Nakamoto.
In a news release, the Sierra Club noted that under the proposed wording, HELCO would not have to have a "properly" functioning instrument for measuring the darkness of smoke from the plant.
HELCO official Don Heinzen said that if the rules are not changed to remove the word "properly," HELCO would have to shut down the plant whenever the instruments breaks, even though the smoke density is legal.
He said there are other methods, approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, for testing the smoke density.
Paula Helfrich of the Hawaii Island Economic Development Board said her agency is the closest neighbor downwind from the power plant and that workers have never had a problem with it.