Environmental groups say the public should get a chance to voice their views about a draft clean air permit the state issued to a natural gas-fired power plant in Westmoreland County. So far, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has declined to hold a public hearing.
The power company Tenaska has been operating the 940-megawatt plant in South Huntingdon Township since 2018 on a temporary air permit. The company is now applying for a Title V Operating Permit, named after a section of the federal Clean Air Act that governs permitting for industrial plants.
The action typically triggers a public hearing, but the DEP declined to do that for the Tenaska plant’s permit.
Lisa Graves-Marcucci, community outreach coordinator for the Environmental Integrity Project, says the public deserves to have a voice in crafting the permit.
“People have voiced to us they felt as though they were never asked their feelings or their concerns. And we were hoping that a public hearing was the opportunity for them to finally be heard,” Graves-Marcucci said, at a community meeting hosted by environmental groups Wednesday.
“These communities are directly impacted, and some of them are environmental justice areas. We believe that it’s always important to get everyone the opportunity to weigh in. These people are stakeholders just like Tenaska,” she added.
Though no public hearing has been scheduled, the public can comment on the draft permit until November 3.
Graves-Marcucci said a number of air monitoring requirements are missing from the draft permit, including monitoring techniques and schedules for the plant to follow to satisfy emissions limits. “How would [the DEP] ever hold them accountable” to pollution limits, she asked.
Graves-Marcucci hopes the lack of a public hearing isn’t a new policy tied to Governor Josh Shapiro’s insistence that the state speed up its permitting process. The DEP recently issued a press release noting that the agency has cleared thousands of permits from its backlog, and quoting DEP Secretary Jessica Shirley as saying that the state is moving “at the speed of business.”
“I understand businesses need their permits, but we cannot sacrifice public participation just because the DEP wants to move quickly for business,” Graves-Marcucci said.
The Tenaska plant emitted around 2.8 million tons of carbon dioxide in 2024, roughly equivalent to about 600,000 cars on the road, making it one of the top emitters of greenhouse gases in the state. It is also a major source of nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds, which can form ground-level ozone, or smog, a lung irritant that can make it harder to breathe for people with lung conditions such as asthma.
Graves-Marcucci said the DEP’s southwest regional director, Eric Gustafson, told her that the agency would hold a public hearing if written comments submitted by the public were to result in “substantive changes to the permit.”
DEP spokeswoman Laina Aquiline said in an email the Tenaska permit was not part of the state’s expedited permitting review program, SPEED, which she said was “subject to the same requirements and process as other permit applications.”
Aquiline said state law requires DEP to “consider” a public hearing “based on the substance of comments that are received.”
“DEP has not made a final decision on whether a public hearing will be held and will decide based on the substance of comments received during the comment period,” Aquiline said. “Any comments received during the public comment period are afforded the same weight and consideration as any comments that would be received during a public hearing, should one be scheduled.”
Tenaska did not respond to a request for comment by press time.
Dave Hess, a former DEP secretary, said he was “puzzled” why the agency wouldn’t simply hold a public hearing on the permit.
“In my experience, if there is a lot of interest in a permit, holding a public hearing was no big deal,” Hess said. He added that the agency regularly holds public hearings for other permits around the state, although the agency isn’t required to hold the hearing by law.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story has been updated to include comments from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection
