On Monday, District Judge Rodney Sippel ordered sweeping injunctive
relief against Ameren Missouri, intended to remedy violations
of PSD requirements he had previously identified resulting from
upgrades to the Ameren Missouri Rush Island generating plant.
Notwithstanding the lengthy opinion, most of the Court's
findings are fairly plain vanilla. Basically, Judge Sippel ordered
Ameren Missouri to submit a PSD permit application and he ruled
that BACT for control of SO2 emissions at Rush Island
required installation of wet flue gas desulfurization
equipment.
The notable part of the opinion was Judge Sippel's handling
of what to do about the 162,000 tons of excess emissions he found
resulted from Ameren Missouri's failure to get the required PSD
permit. First, he concluded that the emissions increased the risk
of mortality among those impacted by the excess emissions. He also
concluded that the only way really to remediate those excess
emissions was to require
