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Scrubgrass Generating Company, L.P.
Scrubgrass Generating Company, L.P., is a $200 million, 83-megaWatt facility supplying electricity to GPU. As a subsidiary of PG&E Corporation, it is the largest competitive generator in North America. Scrubgrass provides electricity to approximately 10,000 homes, employs 60 people in power generation and another 65 jobs in fuel processing, ash reclamation and transportation services. The Scrubgrass generating plant is fueled with bituminous waste coal, once an unusable mining byproduct left in unsightly piles throughout the mining region. By revitalizing abandoned industrial properties and restoring hundreds of acres of polluted land, Scrubgrass provides significant societal, environmental and economic benefits to the county, region and state. Precipitation, when combined with sulfur in waste coal, forms acid mine drainage (AMD). AMD runs off into nearby streams and rivers killing aquatic life downstream. By removing the waste coal, Scrubgrass eliminates the pollution source. Scrubgrass also uses the most advanced technology for burning waste coal. The use of circulating fluidized-bed boilers at the generating plant allows the facility to maintain low SO2, NOX and particulate emissions at levels well below state and federal guidelines. Alkaline ash from the power plant is returned to the sites. It neutralizes other acid-bearing material and is used to supplement native soils and promote revegetation. After removal of the waste coal, the sites are backfilled, contoured and planted to reestablish vegetative cover. Since start-up of the power plant in 1993, 509 acres of abandoned mine lands have been reclaimed under cooperative agreements in Allegheny, Armstrong, Butler and Clearfield counties, at a savings to Pennsylvania of $10.2 million. The company is now performing reclamation work near Apollo, Pennsylvania, at the former Leechburg Mine, one of the worst AMD sites in Western Pennsylvania and a primary pollutant in the Kiskiminetas River. Company contributions of land and money sponsors various related conservation efforts, including species reintroduction, Osprey hacking and an Audubon sanctuary.
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Scrubgrass Generating
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