PP&L, Inc. announced today (6/4) that it has made additional emissions data available for the public from its Pennsylvania coal and oil power plants. This information is being released on the company's web site and through the distribution of information packets in anticipation of the company's reporting these emissions to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on July 1 as part of the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI).

Most coal- and oil-fired power plants, including those operated by PP&L, Inc., will submit TRI reports to the EPA for the first time ever, this year. TRI is a part of the federal Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know program.

The TRI public database covers more than 650 substances reported from many different industrial facilities across the country. The EPA compiles this data in an annual report and publishes the data on the Internet. The national TRI database covering 1998 data is expected to be available sometime in early 2000.

The vast majority of the TRI substances that PP&L, Inc. will report to the EPA are gases released to the air through the company's power plant stacks, or stack gases. PP&L, Inc. also may report much smaller amounts of several minerals, which are all contained in coal and oil, and the bulk of these minerals remain in the ash produced when coal and oil are used to generate electricity.

PP&L, Inc. believes it is highly unlikely that the dilute stack gases can impact human health in any particular individual. The EPA identified two of the three stack gases released in large quantities for health risk assessment: hydrogen fluoride and hydrochloric acid aerosol. The results of the EPA's assessment show that the risk to human health is so small that it does not warrant any regulatory control on these substances' release to address health impacts. The third stack gas, sulfuric acid aerosol, was not studied because the EPA has not identified that substance as a hazardous air pollutant, although it is reported on TRI.

One of the air releases that the EPA continues to study is mercury. PP&L, Inc. is not reporting mercury on the 1998 TRI because it is released in such small quantities that it does not meet the TRI reporting criteria. However, PP&L, Inc. is providing mercury data to the EPA as part of the agency's effort to better quantify mercury emissions from power plants. If the EPA determines that additional regulations on the release of any of these substances are needed, PP&L, Inc. will comply with any regulations once they are established.

Since the beginning of 1999, PP&L, Inc. has been discussing its TRI releases with its neighbors who sit on advisory committees at the company's coal and oil power plants.

TRI is a reporting requirement based on the premise that people have a right to know about the substances being released to the environment," said Lynn Ratzell, PP&L, Inc.'s head of Environmental Management. "TRI has been around since 1987. We are contributing TRI data for the first time this year because the EPA has decided to include coal and oil power plants in the database."

Ratzell also stressed that PP&L, Inc. power plants have not changed the way they operate because of TRI concerns. "We continue to maintain an excellent compliance record with all state and federal environmental laws and regulations," he said. "Our plants operate with the same controls as they had before this new TRI requirement."

PP&L, Inc. currently operates five coal power plants, all in Pennsylvania: the Montour plant, Montour County; the Brunner Island plant, York County; the Martins Creek plant, Northampton County, which also uses oil and natural gas; and the Sunbury plant, Snyder County. The company recently shut down a coal plant at Holtwood in Lancaster County in late April 1999. Each of these five plants will file separate TRI reports for 1998 operations. "Holtwood's decommissioning was a good business decision. Our decision to close the plant had nothing to do with our TRI reporting," said Ratzell.

Since 1990, PP&L, Inc. has been taking actions that have reduced most of its power plant emissions, including TRI releases:

-- The company has reduced nitrogen oxide emissions (one of the causes of ozone) by about 50 percent from 1990 levels, and it has plans to reduce them by about another 10 percent by the end of 1999.

-- The company has cut sulfur dioxide emissions (a substance linked with acid rain) by nearly 15 percent since 1990. By the end of the year 2000, it will have cut sulfur dioxide emissions by about 30 percent from 1990 levels.

-- The company has reduced its overall releases of TRI-covered substances since 1990 by about 20 percent mostly due to its beneficial reuse of coal ash instead of disposing of it as a waste. TRI reportable substances in the coal ash used in this manner will not be reported in the TRI reports.

-- The company intends to reduce its overall TRI-covered substances by about another 8 percent by the end of the year 2000 by switching to low sulfur fuels and by decommissioning the Holtwood coal plant.

"We work very hard to balance our environmental responsibility with our obligation to our shareowners and customers to generate power in a cost-effective and reliable way," said Ratzell.