A Pennsylvania power plant singled out by the state for pumping air pollution into New Jersey will stop burning coal about a year from now – a few months ahead of schedule, officials announced.

The GenOn plant in Portland will stop using coal on June 1, 2014, according to a consent decree between the company and the state, the Department of Environmental Protection said.

“This is a tremendous win for cleaner air and better health for the residents of New Jersey,” said Bob Martin, the DEP commissioner. “For too long, the coal-fired generators at this power plant emitted levels of sulfur dioxide and other pollutants at levels that were unhealthy for our residents.”

In October 2011, the federal Environmental Protection Agency had ordered the Portland plant to cut its sulfur dioxide emissions by 81 percent by 2015. Other federal standards cutting mercury releases into the air are scheduled to come into effect at the same time.

Last year, GenOn announced it would close the plant in January 2015 because the upgrades to reduce pollution would be prohibitively expensive, costing hundreds of millions of dollars.

The plant, which sits near the banks of the Delaware, spewed high levels of various pollutants across the river and into Warren County and other parts of the New Jersey, the DEP said.

The air monitoring station in Knowlton, one mile downwind from the plant, had the highest measuments of sulfur dioxide in the whole state – and was directly caused by the facility, the DEP added. Officials from Knowlton have said that windowsills would be coated in ash on certain days – and there were higher levels of asthma due to the air releases.

The agreement also provides that GenOn will provide $1 million for environmental mitigation projects in the Garden State and Connecticut, which was also a plaintiff.

RELATED COVERAGE

•

Coal-fired power plant just over N.J. border to close in 2015