Changing wind carries a suffocating air along the border of Racine County and Oak Creek. Trains screech by loudly in the middle of the night, rattling windows. Black ash coats windowsills, TVs and cabinets. One of those cabinets is filled with more than a dozen medications to treat a young family’s respiratory ailments, while their neighbors suffer from digestive issues, Crohn’s disease and even cancer.
“That’s part of living near a coal-fired power plant,” said Frank Michna. He lives just south of the Oak Creek Power Plant on property homesteaded by his great-grandfather. Michna, who has lived in the area his whole life, struggles with respiratory issues, while several other family members have developed heart conditions and severe forms of Crohn’s disease. He said of the 12 families living on Michna Road, there’s not one without some sort of respiratory ailment.
Bill Pringle also lived near the plant with his wife and three young children until 2014, when one too many trips to the emergency room forced them to move. In addition to the whole family being on medications for stomach issues, his wife’s life-long breathing issues worsened, his daughter had to be put on an inhaler, and his oldest son was put in a breathing chamber. His youngest son, Jason, was born in the house and started having breathing problems a few months in. By age 3, he’d been in the hospital roughly five times.
One day, Pringle came home as his son was being taken away on a gurney. “He was blue; he couldn’t breathe. His oxygen level was 82. They didn’t find anything wrong with him,” he said. A few months later, his son was admitted to the hospital for pneumonia with a 106.1-degree fever. “It almost killed Jason,” Pringle said. “He looked at me while he was lying in the hospital bed and said, ‘Daddy, am I going to die tonight?’ That was the height of my patience. I was done.”
It’s a story shared by dozens of residents living near the plant, who have become increasingly vocal about the unfavorable living conditions. There has been extensive coverage of the issue by local media, and local organizations are ramping up involvement in the issue—pressing the energy company to address the concerns and transition to clean energy.
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Responding to Concerns?
We Energies (WE) maintains that the Oak Creek plant is one of the cleanest and most efficient coal power plants in the country and operates in compliance with all environmental regulations. WE spokesperson Amy Jahns said the company has responded to growing resident concerns by voluntarily installing an air quality monitor in the area, proactively upgrading water technologies to minimize coal dust, installing video monitoring, improving wind breaks and using foam and crusting agents on the coal closest to the homes. She adds that, “Since 2000, emissions at the site have been reduced by more than 85%,” and that in the nearly two years the air quality monitor has been operating, particulate matter levels have been well within environmental limits.
Over the last decade, tests from We Energies, the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and independent agencies have revealed the presence of coal or coal ash in a number of homes surrounding the plant. They also showed elevated levels of molybdenum and boron in some residents’ wells; these two naturally occurring elements can be found in higher concentrations in coal ash and in landfills. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), exposure to large amounts of boron over short periods of time can affect the stomach, intestines, liver, kidneys and brain and can eventually lead to death. While definitive data on the effects and carcinogenicity of these materials is scarce and often inconclusive, the CDC states there have been potential links to cancer.
Exceeding the Limit
A 2011 DNR investigation into the source of those contaminants found some of the area’s wells with molybdenum levels as high as 121 micrograms per liter—the DNR advises residents to avoid drinking any water with more than 90 micrograms per liter—and levels of boron that exceeded the advised limit of 1,000 micrograms per liter. (Michna’s well was one of them, with boron levels reaching almost 1,800 micrograms per liter. He said that WE supplied him with bottled water for roughly four years while they conducted tests on his well water.) But the DNR report said it did not succeed in identifying the source of the molybdenum and stated that the WE Oak Creek-Caledonia coal ash landfills were not the origin of the boron found in area private wells.
We Energies also did testing at Pringle’s home but said they did not find any evidence of coal ash. As his family’s health worsened, Pringle hired two independent companies to test again. The first, taking 33 samples, found coal in every room, and the second verified that there was coal, but found that there was also fly ash from the smokestacks, according to Pringle. “We Energies denies that there is any fly ash from the plant, but it was in my home,” Pringle said.
Pringle said three medical specialists wrote letters to WE after reviewing the family’s independent test results. “The findings … are consistent with Mrs. Pringle’s worsening asthmatic symptoms,” Dr. David Ross wrote in a 2014 letter. “The raw coal dust particulates are again a pulmonary irritant, and they would obviously worsen asthma and any type of seasonal allergies, including allergic rhinitis. Essentially, individuals who have exposure to this raw dust particulate, especially if it is in and around the home, would obviously continue to suffer down the road. It only makes common sense that an individual with this degree of health issues … would only benefit if completely removed from the offending agent.”
“At a certain point when you have this many people coming forward saying this is affecting their health and sharing their stories, it gets hard to deny that there is no impact,” said Miranda Ehrlich, who is part of the new Clean Power Coalition of Southeast Wisconsin. The group formed around growing concerns of pollution from We Energies’ coal-fired plants and their continued reliance on coal power. Coalition members include local residents impacted by pollution from the Oak Creek coal plants and other concerned community members, as well as groups ranging from the Sierra Club to Greening Greater Racine.
Creating a Buffer Zone
A number of families in the area have been involved in a mediation process with WE, as the company offers to purchase select homes surrounding the plant. Jahns said this is to create buffer property and, according to her, WE has purchased 26 homes since 2009. A data map from the Racine County Register of Deeds shows that the homes circle the plant and are often sold for up to three times the assessed value. We Energies declined to comment on the details of these transactions, but documents and statements from residents show the sales of these properties include a nondisclosure agreement and an addendum not to sue the buyer. The addendum, which was provided by a resident, states:
“For and in consideration of the purchase price, the closing credit and the other covenants of Buyer as set forth herein, the seller covenants not to sue for any claims, losses, causes of action, damages or other relief related to the Oak Creek Power Plant … including but not limited to claims based on negligence, property damage, toxic tort, stigma damages, personal injury, health risks (or fears thereof) and/or diminution of property value.”
The addendum comes with an additional $10,000 payment at closing, according to residents who have turned down the offer but asked not to be named.
Michna was involved in mediation, along with many of his family members. He said he was approached by the company’s lawyers and asked to get a group of his family members to sell their homes together. Though Michna eventually turned down the offer, one of his family members sold his property, assessed at $351,700, for $1.25 million, according to the Racine County Register of Deeds. “They offered me three times the value of my house, plus money to move, but I would have had to sign a nondisclosure,” Frank Michna said. “If they want the property, that’s one thing, but now I can’t sue for my health issues? So, what’s the value of my health? So, I die in 10 years from respiratory issues, but I got $10,000.”
Michna said he is staying put, but is fearful of the future as WE recently announced plans to retire its Pleasant Prairie plant. “I’m scared now. I’m really scared, because now the energy they were selling is coming up here,” he said. But Jahns said the decision to retire the Pleasant Prairie Power Plant will not affect the operations at the Oak Creek site. The retirement, which the company said is driven by economics of the energy market and customer demand, is part of a larger plan to retire older fossil-fueled generation, build natural gas generation and invest in cost-effective, zero-carbon generation, according to Jahns. “We also announced our intent to invest in utility-scale solar that will add to our already diverse portfolio of renewables such as our operation of the two largest wind farms in the state,” she said.
The Clean Power Coalition praised WE’s recent announcement but pushed for clean energy. “There were, no doubt, many reasons to retire the coal-powered Pleasant Prairie plant in Kenosha; all but a few of these could be used to justify retiring We Energies’ Oak Creek plant as well. Coal, despite recent efforts, is in decline. We hope that closing the Pleasant Prairie plant will not transfer the many negative consequences of burning coal to another location, and we are encouraged by We Energies’ plan to add a new solar farm to their generation mix,” according to a press release from the Coalition. Meanwhile, Jahns says that there are no plans at this time to retire the Oak Creek plant or to convert it to renewable sources.
