Details about this story

• Source: Center for Public Integrity
• Date: June 12, 2008
• URL: Read the story
• Bylines: Joaquin Sapien , Ben Welsh
• Topics: Environment
• Data Types: Federal Data
• Description/Excerpt: If the October 2003 sulfur release were an isolated incident, perhaps Texas’s air-breathing citizens downwind of Martin Lake and TXU’s other plants might not have that much to worry about. But a three-month review of federal and state records by the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit journalism organization, suggests otherwise. The review, encompassing 25 million data entries spanning 10 years, shows that between 1997 and 2006, TXU’s coal-fired plants exceeded federal sulfur dioxide emission limits nearly 650 times, spewing more than 1.3 million pounds of excess sulfur dioxide into the Texas air.