A Season to Fight Coal

Madison (WI) Capital Times
By Samara Kalk Derby

In the last four years, local Sierra Club attorney Bruce Nilles has stopped 58 coal-fired plants from being built in the United States. As a result of his work, energy companies have abandoned their plans, fearing going through the permitting process of getting a new coal plant built.

Nilles, 39, director of the organization's National Coal Campaign, has stopped plants in Kansas, Illinois, Florida, Texas and Nevada. He also had a hand in last month's settlement where the state of Wisconsin agreed not only to clean up UW-Madison's coal-fired Charter Street power plant but also to examine and possibly improve the operation of 13 other coal-burning plants it manages across the state.

He is in the process of fighting 54 more coal-burning plants in America.

In the last two weeks alone Nilles has beaten back four plants.

"It's been a very good two weeks," he said, grinning.

It all comes down to global warming and there is a lack of federal action on the issue, Nilles said Thursday from the Sierra Club's local office on the eighth floor of 122 W. Washington Ave., just off of the Capitol Square.

"These coal plants are preventing us from stopping the acceleration of global warming and instead investing in clean, renewable energy sources like wind and solar," Nilles said.

"The reason we focus on coal plants is because they emit 40 percent of the global warming emissions in the United States," he said.

Talking up solar and wind power, Nilles dismisses nuclear power, saying it is too expensive and too dangerous.

The best example, Nilles said, is in Colorado where the largest utility, Xcel Energy, decided to do something about global warming and announced it was going to abandon plans to build a coal plant close to two existing coal plants. Instead, it is planning to invest in large amounts of wind, solar and natural gas and focus on energy efficiency. That combination of sources will cut its air pollution, including global warming pollution, enormously, he said.

"Coal is too dirty and too expensive and the scientists tell us we need strong action on global warming in the next three years to prevent runaway global warming," Nilles said. "The debate is not about our kids and grandkids, it's about what is happening in our lifetime."

The federal government is captive to big coal and big oil and when it comes to global warming, urgent action is needed on the state level, he said. It is the only place to make progress until there is a new administration in power, Nilles added.

Utility officials and other adversaries have countered that the energy demands of the country make burning coal necessary. Coal, which is available domestically, accounts for 50 percent of the electricity produced in the United States. And so far, alternative sources of energy -- such as wind and solar -- meet only a only a small fraction of the country's demand.

Local victory

In terms of the local Charter Street victory, Nilles said it was great teamwork, involving Sierra Club staff and lawyers at Ed Garvey's law firm, Garvey McNeil & McGillivray, which represented the organization.

Attorney David Bender had the largest role, working on the case every night and weekend for the last six months, he said.

Nilles said he first started thinking about the Charter Street power plant in 1989 when he was an undergraduate at UW-Madison and began learning about global warming in the geosciences building next door. A geography and environmental studies major, he even wrote a paper about how to clean up the power plant back then, but nobody listened, he said.

The Sierra Club filed the suit in May against UW-Madison and the state Department of Administration for violations of clean air laws at the plant. In early November, U.S. District Judge John Shabaz ruled in favor of the Sierra Club, agreeing the state violated the Clean Air Act by not applying for new permits and installing pollution controls when major improvements were made at the plant from 1999 to 2004.

That decision led to the Nov. 26 settlement, in which the state agreed to immediately reduce coal use by 15 percent annually -- about 20,000 tons, or 225 railroad cars, a year -- beginning Jan. 1 at the Charter Street plant. It also promised to review its operation and if needed, clean up emissions at 13 coal-burning plants elsewhere, including Capitol Heat and Power on Madison's isthmus.

Coal vs. an Ironman

Nilles doesn't have much of an accent but he grew up in Northwest England. His father was in the U.S. Air Force and met his British mother in Berlin. His mother still lives in England, and his father has passed away.

When his father retired from the Air Force, the family lived in Lodi, where Nilles went to high school for a year. His father worked for the UW doing research and also spent time working as a logger. His mother is a retired social worker, who ran a home for abandoned children for a while.

Nilles has two brothers. One is a recent UW graduate who works at a home for troubled children in Madison. The other is a doctor who had been a professor at the University of Iowa Medical School but left three weeks ago to work in a refugee camp in Darfur.

Nilles is married to Bonnie Cosgrove, daughter of Capital Times reporter Susan Troller, and they live with their two cats on Dickinson Street on the near east side.

Nilles graduated from UW Law School in 1996 and spent four years at the Justice Department in Washington, D.C. enforcing environmental laws. It was the second term of the Clinton administration, "back when we used to enforce environmental laws," Nilles quipped.

He also worked in San Francisco for Earthjustice, a top American environmental law firm, enforcing clean air protections in the Central Valley of California, which has some of the most unhealthy air in the country, he said.

In 2002, he spent six months working on the Democratic gubernatorial campaign of Kathleen Falk, before joining the Sierra Club. He began the coal campaign as a program specifically focused on Illinois. Two years later, he expanded it to a 10-state Midwest region focusing on plans to build as many as 50 new coal plants in the Midwest. Four months ago, he broadened it to the National Coal Campaign, which focuses on coal and coal mining issues across the United States.

"I have a very good fortune of working for the oldest and largest grass-roots organization in America," Nilles said. "We have members in every state. We have the ability when someone proposes a new coal plant to bring in legal and expert help and work with our local members to oppose each of the new coal plants."

Next to his desk hang Sierra Club calendars for 2007 and 2008 and a large map of the United States. He doesn't mark his coal plant targets on the map. "Most of it is in my head. I'm dealing with it day in and day out," he said.

Melissa Scanlan, the founder and senior counsel for Midwest Environmental Advocates, who recently moved to Milwaukee from Madison, praises the work that Nilles is doing.

"Bruce is a truly driven individual who got his mind set on working on the biggest issue facing the world, which is climate change, and he's been relentless over the past couple of years," she said.

Nilles also takes on big challenges outside of work. He competed in his first -- "and only" -- Ironman this year, finishing Ironman Wisconsin with a time of 11 hours and 46 minutes.

"It was great. The conditions were fantastic and I finished," he said, acknowledging that the race is a bit self-indulgent, considering the excessive amounts of training involved.

Running is his strongest event in the three-sport competition. He has run three marathons, New York twice and Boston once. He enjoys mountain and ice climbing, particularly in the U.S. He climbed Mount Shasta in California with his wife right after they met in the summer of 2003. The couple also enjoys backpacking.

During an hourlong interview, Nilles played with a spongy fake coal toy. Also on his desk is a small piece of coal, a souvenir from Charter Street.

Madison's challenge

It is a sore spot that downtown Madison -- "in this most progressive and great city" has three coal-burning power plants, Nilles said. "Our power is dirtier than any other city in Wisconsin," he said.

The dirtiest power plant in the state is Madison Gas & Electric's Blount Street plant, Nilles said.

Two years ago the Sierra Club kicked off a campaign to shut down the three coal plants on the isthmus. It started with the largest one first, the Blount Street plant, and the Sierra Club organized a large citywide educational campaign. More than 200 people showed up at a City Council meeting demanding closure.

To its credit, Nilles said, MG&E announced it was going to stop burning coal at that site in 2010.

The next target was the second-biggest source of pollution, the Charter Street plant. The Sierra Club spent almost two years meeting with the UW and trying to deal with the situation in a reasonable way, but the talks went nowhere.

"When it was clear that the discussions were fruitless, we began investigating their compliance status and found multiple violations," Nilles said.

In November 2006, the organization sent the state a letter outlining the violations and gave it an opportunity to negotiate. After no progress for six months, the Sierra Club sued the university and the state in May in federal court.

"Turns out they have significant compliance problems statewide and no oversight by the DNR (Department of Natural Resources)," he said.

Wisconsin, incidentally, is the No. 1 state for the construction of new coal plants, with three plants under construction.

"John Muir, Aldo Leopold and Gaylord Nelson would turn in their graves if they knew what we are doing in this state," Nilles said. "We are building more new sources of global warming than any state in the union."

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