After Ameren filed its application for the facility earlier this year, the corps posted the application on its Web site and announced that the public could submit comments from May 30 until June 20. Hoagland said that she learned of the project only recently and that she believes the corps failed to distribute notices to enough people, particularly landowners in the area. The byway council also received no notice, she said. But the corps did send the announcement to local mayors and others who have requested such announcements, said Jennifer Watkins, executive assistant to Col. Michael Morrow, district engineer in charge of the St. Louis District. Hoagland, who said she has had to contend with smoke from the power plant since it was completed in 1968, said she is concerned that the plant's plan to burn more petroleum coke may increase the amount of sulfur dioxide it releases.
Sulfur dioxide contributes to acid rain.
Mike Menne, manager of Ameren's environmental safety and health department, acknowledged that petroleum coke contains about four times as much sulfur as most of the coal the plant burns. He said that after the Portage des Sioux plant got a permit to burn petroleum coke in 1998, the plant actually reduced its sulfur dioxide emissions from about 55,000 tons to 44,000 tons per year. That was partly because the company had to burn more low-sulfur coal in order to get permission to burn the petroleum coke, he said. In addition, under the proposal, the plant would not sharply increase its burning of petroleum coke, Menne said. The amount of coke in the fuel stream at any one time will rise from a maximum of 5 percent to 10 percent, he said.