Though officials at Logansport Municipal Utilities believe they have identified the source of the dark-colored smoke seen recently billowing from the smoke stack at the power plant downtown, it might be weeks if not longer before they can do anything to change it.

During a report Tuesday to the Utility Service Board, Greg Wengert, manager of the generating plant, said a combustion engineer visited the plant on June 30 and indicated the “blue haze” had been caused by the high sulfur content in the coal burned at the plant.

“It’s a fairly common occurrence when burning coal that has more than 2 percent sulfur content,” Wengert said.

He added that the coal LMU was using averaged around 2.4 percent to 2.5 percent sulfur content. However, LMU has been using the same coal with no problems for several years.

Although the emissions and the particulates in the smoke are within the state-regulated limits and the sulfur seems to cause no health risks, Utilities Superintendent Paul Hartman said LMU intended to begin purchasing a lower sulfur coal in hopes of reducing or eliminating the smoke.

While Hartman said he had contacted LMU’s coal provider, Black Beauty, about ordering coal with between 1.5 percent and 2 percent sulfur content shortly after the problem was diagnosed, LMU has received none of the low sulfur coal yet.

“All that coal has been allocated, and we’re having a hard time finding coal that we can use,” said Hartman.

Although LMU’s contract is good through the end of 2008, Hartman said he has contacted other suppliers throughout the state trying to procure the lower sulfur coal. Neither Hartman nor Wengert gave an estimate on how long that might take.

However, even if LMU can obtain it, the cost would be nearly twice what the utilities pay now.

Currently, LMU pays about $65 a ton for coal. The lower sulfur coal would cost around $125 per ton — a cost, Wengert said, that would need to be handed onto LMU’s customers.

The cost increase drew a reaction from several board members, including Tom Slusser, who indicated that it might not be worth it.

“If it’s not a health problem, why spend the money?” he questioned. “... Now is the time to cut costs. I don’t give a damn if we have a little bit of smoke because we have to find places to cut costs. Yeah, there’ll be a few people that will raise a dickens, but if it’s not a health concern, why bother?”

Hartman said he wants to act now to get ahead of any future inquiries from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.

“If we knowingly have something going out in the stack, eventually IDEM is going to come down on us,” Hartman said. “They’re going to say, ‘Well, you knew about this. Why didn’t you do anything?’ And the fines will be more than what we could save.”

Hartman said LMU was looking at several other possibilities to deal with the problem. Wengert indicated that an additional cleaning treatment called a scrubber might help reduce the sulfur emission, but the equipment bears a multi-million dollar price tag along with some additional process concerns.

LMU is now considering using a mixture of both low-sulfur and high-sulfur coal, Hartman said. Additionally, Hartman said LMU might be able to sign a long-term contract for low-sulfur coal to bring down the costs.

He indicated, though, that a solution to the problem had not yet been found.

Carla Knapp can be contacted at (574) 732-5150 or via e-mail at carla.knapp@pharostribune.com