A lawsuit is filed today against Colorado Springs Utilities claiming the Martin Drake Power Plant has violated the Clean Air Act over 3,000 times. WildEarth Guardians is the group behind the the lawsuit, they’ve been threatening action since fall.

WildEarth Guardians is based in Santa Fe, with other offices throughout the west, including Denver.

The Guardians have programs focusing on western wildlife, rivers, open spaces and climate and energy. The group’s complaint says the Martin Drake Power Plant is not correctly monitoring its opacity.

The Clean Air Act requires continuous opacity monitoring. Opacity meaning the amount of light reduced by an air pollutant. Air opacity monitoring is set to measure those emissions being released into the atmosphere.

WildEarth Guardians claim between April 2011 and December 2015 the power plant had unexcused periods of opacity monitor downtime. Opacity is monitored on a six minute basis, the guardians claim every six minute downtime is a violation; amounting to 3,155 Clean Air Act violations total.

The group bases its claims from Springs Utilities records that are online.

“We were able to determine based on their own reports that the plant was not continuously monitoring opacity, and that there were these down times when monitoring wasn’t occurring,” said Samantha Ruscavage-Barz, staff attorney for WildEarth Guardians.

She went on to say without proper monitoring, you can’t know the true amount of pollution released into the air.

The lawsuit aims to make the Springs Utilities board comply with all monitoring obligations, assess civil penalties against the board, and the costs for litigation in the matter.