SMOKESTACK ISSUE CAN BE RESOLVE AMICABLY

Officials at both Southeast Missouri State University and the Missouri Department of Natural Resources say they want to find a way to solve emission problems at the university's power plant. The coal-burning plant produces steam and electricity for the campus, but the DNR says its tests show that emissions from the smokestacks don't always meet state requirements.

Part of the problem is that much of the power plant relies on aging equipment. Operators at the power plant says the emission problem is worst whenever one of the old boilers is restarted after being shut down for maintenance.

The DNR's monitoring indicates that the smokestack emissions contain too many particulates. Installing additional emissions-cleaning equipment or replacing some of the old equipment would be costly.

The power plant's neighbors living mostly in single-family residences to the west and north have noticed the black smoke coming from the stacks ever since the plant was restarted after some refurbishing a couple of years ago. At that time, the dense smoke was explained as a part of the startup process. But the smoke has been noticeable most of the time the plant has been operating since then.

The DNR uses one commonsense test: The smoke looks dirty. The DNR testing relies in part on opacity standards, which measure how much light passes through the smoke. The less light there is, the blacker -- and dirtier -- the smoke.

Once upon a time, smokestacks with their dark plumes were signs of a community fortunate enough to have industries that provided jobs. These days, industrial recruitment efforts tend to focus on so-called clean plants that don't have smokestacks. And industries that still have smokestacks have been required by government regulations -- at tremendous cost -- to install scrubbers and other devices to make sure the emissions are clean.

Not all emissions that look dirty are necessarily dirty. Consider the federal Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund cleanup project at the old Missouri Electric Works site on South Kingshighway. The plume from that smokestack, created by a process used to burn contaminants out of the soil, looks ominous at times. But EPA officials insist there is nothing but water vapor going into the air.

Any anyone old enough to remember when service stations sold gasoline with ethyl in it remembers how much automobiles have changed to meet air-emission standards. That effort continues, with cities like St. Louis being required to sell unleaded gasoline with special additives intended to make the exhaust even cleaner than the fumes produced by catalytic converters.

It's time to get the emissions at the university power plant in compliance. Working together, the university and the DNR ought to be able to accomplish that without a lot of wrangling.