A Colorado health department official said Tuesday that Xcel Energy’s Cherokee coal-fired plant in north Denver commits infrequent air-permit violations that haven’t warranted any enforcement action from the state.
“They are operating, for the vast majority of the time, in compliance with their permit,” said Paul Tourangeau, director of the air-pollution-control division at the Colorado Department of Health and Environment.
Rocky Mountain Clean Air Action said this week that it plans to sue Xcel for more than 13,000 alleged violations of the federal Clean Air Act, which allows citizens to pursue legal action against a polluter.
Xcel said the allegations are without merit.
The Denver-based clean-air group said it uncovered the alleged Cherokee violations from records that Xcel files with the state. The bulk of the violations are for monitors being down.
Said Tourangeau: “We do look at these data, and we review them to understand whether the facility is being operated in compliance with its permit. The state declined to apply its enforcement resources to these kinds of numbers because they’re relatively low.”
He said Xcel’s emission monitors at the plant are down less than 1 percent of the time.
“Given that you’re dealing with pretty technical equipment, that’s pretty decent operational history,” Tourangeau said.
