New emissions rules take effect at Big Cajun II

A record-setting agreement over pollution emissions from the Big Cajun II coal-fired power plant in New Roads becomes effective today, following U.S. District Judge James Brady’s signing off Tuesday on the settlement between NRG Energy’s subsidiary Louisiana Generating, the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Justice. The largest Clean Air Act settlement in state history requires Louisiana Generating, which has owned Big Cajun II for more than a decade, to spend $250 million to reduce air pollution through 2015, with further reductions by 2025. The company will also pay a civil fine of $3.5 million—half of which will go to Louisiana for environmentally friendly measures—and spend $10.5 million on environmental mitigation projects. Officials say a combination of new pollution controls, natural gas conversion and annual emission caps will eliminate 27,300 tons of harmful emissions, such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, each year. “The Big Cajun II Power Plant is the largest source of illegal air pollution in Louisiana,” Ignacia Moreno, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, said when the consent decree was drafted in November. “The settlement will secure substantial reductions in harmful emissions from the plant, which will have a beneficial impact on air quality for residents of Louisiana and downwind states.” The EPA began its investigation of Big Cajun II, one of Pointe Coupee Parish’s largest employers, in 2004. The government filed its civil complaint in Baton Rouge federal court in 2009. —Penny Font