The Rush Island Energy Center on the Mississippi River will close following a federal court ruling (photo courtesy of Ameren Missouri).
One of Ameren Missouri’s largest coal plants will shut down Monday after more than 13 years of litigation over its failure to comply with federal clean air regulations.
The St. Louis-based electric utility will retire the Rush Island Energy Center , a two-unit 1,178-megawatt coal plant on the banks of the Mississippi River in Jefferson County, which operated for years in violation of the Clean Air Act.
Ameren, which serves 1.2 million customers in Missouri, announced in 2021 it would retire the plant 15 years early rather than install pollution controls ordered by a federal court.
Once the plant shuts down, the company will start disconnecting the plant from power, move equipment out to Ameren’s other coal plants and ready it for demolition, said Tim Lafser, Ameren’s vice president of power operations and engineering.
“We’re guessing three to six months of activity there before we would be to the point where we could turn it over to a demolition contractor to knock the plant down,” Lafser said.