A federal judge ruled a lawsuit against a Metro East coal plant can move forward, saying an environmental group’s allegations are sufficient for the case to proceed.
The Sierra Club sued Prairie State Generating Co. over its operation of a coal-fired power plant in Washington County in hopes of shutting the plant down. The plant sits about 45 miles from downtown St. Louis and 30 miles southeast of Belleville.
The national environmental group alleges the plant has been operating and emitting harmful air pollutants without necessary permits required by the federal Clean Air Act. The Sierra Club filed the lawsuit last year.
Prairie State, a coal plant that provides energy to 180 communities across the Midwest and mid-Atlantic, has ranked as one of the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases in the state, which trap heat in the atmosphere and cause climate change, according to records from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The Sierra Club also said the plant emits high levels of other air pollutants including ozone, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide.
Alyssa Harre, a spokeswoman for the coal plant, said the company is operating legally under a permit required by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency. While the company is disappointed the court did not dismiss the lawsuit, it remains committed to working with state regulators.
“Sierra Club’s California-based Environmental Law Program is bringing this politically motivated suit in an attempt to circumvent the Illinois regulatory process, which could introduce instability to the electric grid to the detriment of the consumers we serve,” Harre said in a statement.
Attorneys for the coal plant hoped to dismiss the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Illinois. The defendants argued that the Sierra Club had failed to prove the coal plant broke any laws and the Oakland-based environmental group does not have the legal grounds to sue.
In the ruling on Aug. 9, Magistrate Judge Reona Daly said the allegations are sufficient to move forward with the case.
Daly acknowledged that this effectively accepts the allegation that the plant has been operating for a decade without a permit “and that the state and federal governments have simply ignored the facility’s existence.”
But Daly went on to say that, while the dismissal raises certain issues, they are not before the court.
“The undersigned could only speculate as to why [Prairie State] can continue operating without a permit, in seeming contravention of federal and state statutes,” Daly wrote. “The undersigned further acknowledges that the ultimate relief sought by [the Sierra Club] — halting the operations of a power source for millions of people — is an extraordinary request, by any standard.”
In a statement, a representative for the Sierra Club said an operating permit is a fundamental requirement of the Clean Air Act to ensure proper oversight.
“No power plant is above the law, especially one that is among the most polluting and deadly coal plants in the country,” said Christine Nannicelli, Illinois, senior campaign representative with the Sierra Club.
This legal development comes at a time of change and transition for the coal industry in Illinois.
Thanks to legislation passed by the Illinois Legislature and signed into law by Gov. JB Pritzker in 2021, Prairie State and other publicly owned plants will be required to become 100% carbon free by 2045. Other coal plants, owned by private investors and not municipalities, will be required to shut down by 2030 under the legislation, dubbed the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act.
