(ROCKDALE) Alcoa in Rockdale is under investigation by state officials for possible clean-air violations that could span two decades. Alcoa is the state’s largest in regard to grandfathered emissions, and reportedly made millions of dollars worth of equipment changes in the 1980's without permits. According to company spokesman Jim Hodson, the Rockdale plant had not broken the law, claiming the 1980's work did not require a permit because it was routine maintenance.

A story in the Dallas Morning News Wednesday said reports in state files show that the plant’s emissions of smog and acid rain-causing pollution, which drift north into the Dallas-Fort Worth area, increased after most of the work was finished in 1985.

Clean-air laws say old plants lose exemptions from modern standards if they make major changes that increase emissions.

in 1985, however, an Alcoa manager was quoted as saying that the smelter couldn’t really be considered 30 years old because so much of it was new. And in a letter to the state in 1985, an Alcoa supervisor called work on one unit a major overhaul.

According to Travis Brown, president of Neighbors for Neighbors, a group of landowners battling Alcoa’s plans for expanded coal mining in Lee and Bastrop Counties, Alcoa’s own statements and record show they’ve been operating illegally. Neighbors for Neighbors found documents describing Alcoa’s renovations in state files.

The key document, Alcoa’s response to a 1990 federal survey of electric generating plants, details each capital improvement from 1979 to 1989 that cost $200,000 or more. Alcoa listed about $45 million in renovations.

Hodson said Neighbors for Neighbors searched TNRCC and EPA records as a strategy in an attempt to block the company’s mining expansion plans. He said the company filled out an EPA survey in 1990, concerning that work, and sent it to the Texas Air Control Board, now known as TNRCC. He said there had been no response from the agencies since then. Although Alcoa stamped much of its survey response "confidential," the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency sent a copy in 1990 to Texas air regulators. Neighbors for Neighbors obtained the documents from public files at the conservation commission.

Environmental Protection Agency officials said they intend to investigate Alcoa this year. EPA spokesman David Bary said officials in the agency’s Dallas office promised an investigation last August, but hadn’t started one. He said it is on a list of investigations to complete this year.

Alcoa is the world’s biggest aluminum maker, with 142,000 workers in 37 countries. It’s also the biggest employer here in Milam County with 1,900 people making aluminum ingots and powder.

The story in the Dallas Morning News was prompted by a study that has identified Alcoa’s nitrogen oxides emissions as a component of smog in the Dallas Fort Worth area. The story said Alcoa’s 54 tons of nitrogen oxides emissions per day were the equivalent of about 10 percent of all emissions from cars, power plants, factories and other man-made sources in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

State clean-air plans say the area must slash nitrogen oxides emissions by 261 tons per day, about 47 percent, by 2007. Alcoa agreed last year to cut nitrogen oxides voluntarily by 30 percent by 2002. However, Tom Smith, Texas director of the environmental and consumer group Public Citizen, said if Alcoa had to install up-to-date controls, it could be enough to ensure that the Dallas-Fort Worth area gets into compliance.

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