UW-Madison illegally polluting? This is a headline few in Madison would take with a grain of salt, but a Sierra Club lawsuit filed last week alleges UW-Madison violated the Clean Air Act after it failed to upgrade its Charter Street power and heating plant with appropriate pollution controls.
Regardless of their severity, these allegations must serve as the impetus for university officials to get serious about going green.
Coal burning has literally and figuratively become a dirty word in the last decade, but the majority of the power we rely on every day is produced from coal. Scrubbing technology has helped to eliminate many of the pollutants and harmful byproducts of coal combustion, but with energy consumption continuing to rise, there is not yet a silver bullet for producing cleaner energy.
As one of the foremost research institutions in the world, UW-Madison spends millions each year on developing new technologies. As a university committed to green building, UW-Madison should address not only the lack of alternative energy and energy-conservation research, but also the substantive action at home that comes behind commitment to going green.
More hybrid university vehicles on campus, more commitment to green building and plans to reduce power usage at night from lights and idle computers are a few steps in the right direction. Simply put, as a university that is the centerpiece of a pro-green Madison, UW-Madison needs to start taking more action for the future of its energy sustainability.
As for the lawsuit, this is certainly not outside interests coming in to bully school officials. Bruce Nilles, head of the Sierra Club, is an alumnus of UW-Madison's law school. John Muir, the Sierra Club's founder, also attended UW-Madison.
The Sierra Club warned the Department of Natural Resources and the university over the past several months that it would pursue legal action if UW-Madison did not address the problems at the Charter Street Plant, which it has not.
If it turns out the plant does not meet regulations, we hope the Sierra Club and UW-Madison can settle the lawsuit by bringing the plant up to code.
People are not expecting changes overnight, and dealing with controversy seems to continually plague UW-Madison officials.
Officials said in a statement, ""To the best of our knowledge, we have operated the plant in accordance with all applicable legal requirements."" However, considering UW-Madison is a modern university committed to environmental sustainability, shouldn't our standards go above and beyond the recommended legal requirements? We think so.
