MADISON Wis.
A 53-year-old coal power plant on the University of Wisconsin campus has been in violation of the federal Clean Air Act for five years, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.
The Sierra Club filed the lawsuit in May claiming that the university violated the Clean Air Act by failing to install modern pollution controls when it performed several upgrades to keep the power plant operating.
In his ruling, U.S. District Judge John Shabaz ordered pollution controls installed on the plant built in 1954.
The university will move to improve the plant’s environmental performance, increase efficiency in heating and cooling the campus and use more alternative fuels, said Alan Fish, the associate vice chancellor of UW-Madison. But those changes could cost hundreds of millions of dollars, he said.
No decision had been made on whether to appeal the ruling, Fish said.
The Sierra Club filed the lawsuit as part of a strategy to pressure the university into closing the plant and switching to a cleaner-burning fuel such as natural gas or biomass.
