By
The Associated Press
TORONTO - Pollution from Ontario power plants is sickening Americans, the attorneys general of New York and Connecticut said in a letter asking Canada's government to assess the situation.
The letter to Environment Minister David Anderson from Eliot Spitzer and Richard Blumenthal, the attorneys general of New York and Connecticut, includes strong accusations in seeking an environmental assessment of three Ontario Power Generation coal-burning plants.
With Prime Minister Jean Chretien meeting President Bush yesterday, the timing of the Jan. 31 letter was intended to raise the issue as the leaders discuss U.S.-Canadian relations.
The letter cited pollution from Nanticoke, the largest coal-fired plant in North America, along with the Lakeview and Lambton plants. All three are in southern Ontario, and tracking of their emissions shows the pollutants blow into New York and spread into New England, according to Spitzer and Blumenthal.
One paragraph, noting a recent study that attributed premature deaths in upstate New York to power plant emissions, said the study failed to include the much-greater amount of pollutants crossing the border from southern Ontario.
The mortality rate in the Buffalo, N.Y. area attributed to U.S. power plant emissions already exceeded the level in New York City, the letter said. If the effects of the Canadian plants were included in the study, it said, "the Buffalo area mortality rate undoubtedly would have been significantly higher."
Spitzer and Blumenthal ask for an environmental assessment of Ontario Power Generation's plan, announced in September, to install catalytic equipment on some coal-burning units at Nanticoke, Lakeview and Lambton.
It said the new equipment would likely fall short of targeted reductions of nitrogen oxide called for by the 2000 Ozone Annex to the Canadian-United States Air Quality Agreement.
The equipment also would fail to reduce emissions of other "harmful pollutants" such as mercury, the letter said.
"In sum, these coal-burning power plants have caused and will continue to cause adverse environmental and public health effects in Canada, New York, Connecticut, and other downwind states," it said.
Attempts to obtain reaction or comment yesterday morning from Anderson's office were unsuccessful.
Environmental groups have battled Ontario Power Generation for years over emissions from its plants. Jack Gibbons of the Ontario Clean Air Alliance, a grouping of 76 organizations, called the utility owned by the Ontario government the province's biggest air polluter.
Spitzer and Blumenthal blamed the Nanticoke power plant, located 40 miles from Buffalo, for harming air quality across the border and contributing to acid rain that has deadened 20 percent of the lakes in New York's Adirondack region, the largest wilderness area in the eastern United States.
