Energy Futures Holding Corp. and its subordinate, Liminant Generation Company, and LLC have made 38,000 violations of the Clean Air Act. On behalf of the Sierra Club, Earthjustice and the Environmental Integrity Project are threatening to sue. They are targeting the Big Brown power plant located in Freestone County and the Monticello power plant located in Titus County. According to company data, the Big Brown power plant violated its opacity limits over 20,000 times in the past five years and its particulate matter limits 370 times in the past three and a half years. Three of Luminant's coal plants: Big Brown, Monticello, and Martin Lake, are the top three industrial polluters in Texas among nearly 2,000 industrial plants. According to data Luminant filed in 2009 with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, these three power plants make up more than 25 percent of the state's industrial air pollution and more than 46 percent of the state's coal plant pollution.
So why hasn’t the government taken any action to put this polluting to a stop? Erin Fonken, the Environmental Integrity Project attorney states that "Breathing excessive levels of harmful air pollution should not be a way of life for the people who live and work near Luminant's plants; Luminant must be held accountable for its thousands of violations and clean up its act." Someone must do something about these violations before the whole world becomes completely polluted. Sierra Club and Earthjustice are taking the iniciative and taking control of the situation. They hope to influence the government to do the same and support their actions to sue the companies. "It's high time for Luminant to act like a good neighbor and stop dumping harmful pollution on its neighbors within the state and outside the state," said Earthjustice attorney Suma Peesapati.
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