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Physician and public-health speakers urge PSC to include health costs and emissions from Coal Strip in IRP review
Summary
A pulmonary physician and other commenters urged the commission to require Northwestern's IRP to account for health-care and pollution costs associated with continued Coal Strip operation and to follow PSC rules requiring societal-cost scenarios.
Dr. Robert Merchant, a pulmonary critical-care physician who said he sits on the board of Montanans for Affordable Energy, told the commission the IRP omits health-care costs tied to particulates and greenhouse gas emissions and therefore understates total societal costs. "Ignoring them is shifting the cost onto Montanans who can't afford them," he said, citing PM2.5 harms and prior studies that estimated respiratory and cardiovascular impacts tied to the plant's emissions.
Several speakers also urged the PSC to apply its administrative rules requiring evaluation of long-term total costs including externalities. Commenters pointed to Coal Strip as a locus of those externalities and said extending its life or building new fossil capacity would lock in health and environmental harms as well as potential stranded costs.
