Xcel Energy garbage burners belch out pollutants in Red Wing, Mankato, and La Crosse.

 

This is Xcel’s Red Wing “steam plant”:  Two 1940s coal burners converted in the 1980s to burn ground-up garbage.  Electricity output is small, around 26 megaWatts.  Emissions are high.

Some partial emissions numbers from the MPCA for these Red Wing burners:

Carbon monoxide  121,399 pounds

Lead                                    69 pounds

NOx                        1,212,168 pounds

PM10                      21,046 pounds

Sulfur dioxide        101,949 pounds

Ammonia                        149 pounds

Hydrochloric

acid                        16,040 pounds

Chromium                     18.11 pounds

Manganese                     20.22 pounds


Red Wing Total                                             1,472,958 pounds

Rough total Mankato                                  1,791,161 pounds


Combined total:  3,264,119  Well over three million pounds of health damaging air pollutants.  Numbers for Xcel’sLa Crosse, WI burner upcoming.

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. Action Alert: Minnesota Public Utilities Commission: Withdraw funding for increased garbage incineration! | alanmuller.com - January 12, 2016

    […] pounds of lead, enough to dumb down a lot of kids.  The permit for this burner expired in 2009.  Partial details here.  Some recent press coverage on another Xcel garbage burner is here and […]

  2. The City of Red Wing–home of the Plume and the Black Blob? | alanmuller.com - April 28, 2016

    […] So far as I can see they care nothing–nothing!–for the effects of the increased health-damaging incinerator pollution on Red Wing residents.  (Details here:  Xcel Energy garbage burners belch out pollutants in Red Wing, Mankato, and La Crosse.) […]

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