CHARLESTON - State-owned utility Santee Cooper is disputing a report from a coalition of environmentalists that its Winyah power plant nearly doubled emissions of three toxic pollutants during the past nine years.

"It's important to extract fact from fiction," utility spokeswoman Laura Varn said. "Santee Cooper meets or exceeds all state and federal environmental standards."

The Clear the Air coalition cited the plant near Georgetown as among the worst in the country for increases in the amounts of nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide released.

"In 1995, Winyah was shut down the entire year except for two weeks because of a turbine fire," Varn said. If the numbers for 1995 are not included, the plant's increases are sharply reduced for carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide, and sulfur dioxide releases decrease.

The report was released as Senate subcommittee hearings begin on the Bush administration's Clear Skies Act.

The figures in the report were taken from federal Environmental Protection Agency numbers, said Kate Prevost, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, one of the coalition members.

Those numbers did not break down days of operation for as many as 700 of the plants included in the report.

"We will be looking into ways to verify this in future reports so that these types of discrepancies don't reoccur," she said. "The Winyah plant still increased its emissions of sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide if we take the period from 1996 to 2003."

The report said that nine of the 13 power plants in South Carolina increased carbon dioxide emissions from 1995 to 2003, including at least two other Santee Cooper facilities.

The research group characterized the state's electric plants as among the oldest and dirtiest in the nation. It said the Clear Skies proposal allows dirty plants to delay cleanup by buying credits from newer and cleaner plants.

"The president's plan caps the emissions of 1,000 power plants nationwide, permanently cuts three kinds of emissions and forces reductions without lawsuits," said Wesley Denton, spokesman for U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C.

He said DeMint, a member of the subcommittee, thinks the Bush plan "clears up the air, clears out the courts and creates jobs."

Kevin Bishop, spokesman for U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said the research group has a political agenda.

If the group "has a genuine concern for promoting clean energy, they will reverse course and support President Bush's and Senator Graham's efforts to build new nuclear power plants in the United States," he said.