"Chicago-Area Coal Plant To Shut Down Earlier Than Expected"

"After deciding it isn't worth cleaning up one of the nation's dirtiest power plants, the owners of an aging coal-burner along the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan are shutting it down sooner than expected."



"In its latest financial documents, Virginia-based Dominion Resources says it will shutter the State Line Power Station by March instead of 2014, a move that will scrap one of the Chicago area's biggest sources of lung- and heart-damaging air pollution.

Sandwiched between Lake Michigan and the Chicago Skyway at the Illinois-Indiana border, the plant has a Hammond address but is surrounded by Chicago on two sides. It emits more lung-damaging nitrogen oxide than two other former ComEd plants in the city and churns more smog-forming sulfur dioxide and toxic mercury into the air than either plant, according to a Tribune analysis of federal records."

Michael Hawthorne reports for the Chicago Tribune November 18, 2011.

Source: Chicago Tribune, 11/18/2011