American Electric Power (AEP) reached a settlement with the U.S. government that will cost the utility $4.6 billion to reduce harmful air pollution from 16 coal-burning power plants, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said Tuesday. In what the EPA called the single biggest environmental enforcement settlement in U.S. history, Ohio-based AEP agreed to end an eight-year lawsuit brought against it by the federal government. “This is a landmark, an unprecedented case, in the [history] of air-pollution regulation in the United States,” said EPA assistant administrator of enforcement Granta Nakayama. The previous record was when Virginia-based Dominion Resources agreed in 2003 to spend $1.2 billion on pollution controls in an EPA settlement. In its deal, AEP agreed to pay $15 million in civil penalties and $60 million in pollution-cleanup costs to end the “new source review” case brought by the Justice Department in 1999. AEP, whose coal-fired power plants are the backbone of the midwest's power grid, agreed to cut soot and smog emissions by 813,000 tons per year when the agreement comes into full force in about a decade. AEP chairman Mike Morris said he always believed his company complied with the law, and “that remains our position today.” But the settlement “enables us to make much-needed efficiency improvements at our plants without fear of additional [pollution] allegations,” he said in a statement. An AEP spokesman disputed the $4.6 billion figure, noting that the number did not appear in the 121-page settlement document.
