Oct. 29--Even as Massachusetts environmental officials weigh letting four power plants pollute more this winter to avoid an energy crisis, new data released yesterday show the plants haven't come close to their existing pollution caps since 2002.

Fearing natural gas shortages and blackouts this winter, the Department of Environmental Protection has begun drafting regulations that would let four generating stations that usually burn gas switch to dirtier fuel oil more days this winter than they have been allowed in prior winters.

Governor Mitt Romney's administration is considering whether more pollution from oil burning is an acceptable price to pay to stretch out hurricane-strained natural gas supplies and prevent possible catastrophic blackouts on the coldest days of the winter.

But in a meeting with several activists yesterday, environmental officials distributed data showing that the four plants in question haven't come close to bumping up against their oil consumption caps in recent years.

As a result, adopting the higher oil-burning limits could produce much higher increases levels of smelly, smog-forming sulfur dioxide and sooty particulates.

The plants in question include three owned by Florida energy conglomerate FPL Inc. in Bellingham and Dartmouth, FPL's MassPower plant in Springfield, and the Altresco plant in Pittsfield owned by General Electric Co.

MassPower, for example, is authorized by air-pollution regulators to burn 15,000 gallons of oil per year, but burned only 226 last year and 4,524 in 2003, the DEP data show. Since 2002, the Bellingham power plant has used barely 5 percent of its total oil-burning allotment. Gas generally has been cheaper to use than oil.

Romney's administration is looking into letting the plants burn oil 20 to 50 percent more often than their current limit, but the data suggest if plants go all the way to the higher caps, total emissions from oil burning could jump 30- or 40-fold at some plants compared to what they have been emitting.

Environmentalists said Romney needs to push a comprehensive energy policy including conservation, rather than just creating pollution loopholes to avoid short-term problems. "It's such a missed opportunity for leadership," said Jane Bright, a founding member of HealthLink, a North Shore environmental group.

Frank Gorke of the Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group said the policy changes under consideration are "outrageous. You can't address energy problems by relaxing air-pollution rules. The governor needs to come up with a real plan to conserve energy."

Ed Coletta, a spokesman for the department, stressed that the agency was still in the early stages of reviewing options to handle a severe cold snap and getting feedback from environmental and industry groups. "We're probably two or three weeks away from even having a recommendation for the governor," Coletta said.

FPL has declined to comment on the issue. But the owners of the Pittsfield plant said they do not expect to run the plant very often this winter, so the question of letting them burn more oil could wind up being moot.

Donald W. Scholl, president of PurEnergy, which operates the Pittsfield unit for GE, said because of energy market economics, the plant's current business plan is to run only at times of peak electric demand, mainly in the summer.

"I really don't expect we're going to be running a lot this winter, and I would be surprised if we got up to our maximum days" burning oil under even the existing state air-pollution cap, Scholl said in an interview this week.

-----

To see more of The Boston Globe, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.boston.com/globe.

Copyright (c) 2005, The Boston Globe

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.