Back corona does indeed exist.

It's a phenomenon that occurs within electrostatic

precipitators filtering dust that has high resistivity. As a layer of dust with high resistivity
(>10^8 ohm-cm) builds up, a high E-field may develop within the dust layer. If the E-field
reaches 10-20 kV/cm, microdischarges may develop within the dust layer which, in turn,
generate large numbers of positive ions which drift toward the negative corona-generating
electrodes. This reduces the negative space charge in the air region, reducing precipitator
collection efficiency and increased odds of sparkover. Back corona is a severe problem in
ESP's with certain types of high resistivity dust. Does that sufficiently answer your question?
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This is an engineering forum, so discussions are normally fairly technical. Without getting
into the physics of back corona, the root cause is the high resistivity of the dust that
adversely impacts dust collection efficiency and increases power consumption.
Common methods to address the problem include modifying the resistivity of the dust (by
chemical conditioning, injecting sulfur trioxide gas or water droplets into the gas stream),
actively reducing the high voltage supply voltage whenever back corona is detected, using a
pulsed HV supply instead of HVDC, or making fundamental design changes to the shapes of
the corona and collection electrodes. Since you may not have access to the technical
literature (IEEE, etc.), here are a cople of readable online articles which discuss ESP
operation, back corona, and various approaches that can be used to reduce/prevent it:
http://www.indigotechnologies.com.au/documents/icespviia.pdf
http://www.indigotechnologies.com.au/documents/csiro88a.pdf

10^8 ohm-cm is a really low resistivity when you deal with Electrostatic Precipitators
(ESPs). This resistivity is actually so low, that the voltage drop across the collected dust
layer may not suffice to maintain the collected dust safely adhered on the ESP plates.
Back Corona will not be created in a mechanically well-designed ESP until a much higher
resistivity is reached, with the worst cases from ash after coal fired boilers to be be found in
India, Australia, Mongolia and in some parts of Russia. The highest resistivity example ash is
probably the Tarong Power station in Australia, where the resistivity is often well above
10^15 ohm-cm, thus 10 ^7 (or 10 million) times higher than the value you mentioned.
Back Corona usually starts to be a problem once the resistivity goes above 10^11 ohm-cm,

meaning that from then and up the Intermittent Energization (Semipulse) will reduce
emission. Note that although Indigo have one of their installations att Tarong, it is installed
there to agglomerate fine particles to become more coarse, not to abate Back Corona.

Back corona is not abated by Indigo. The target of Indigo is to agglomerate small particles
to larger particles which ESPs find easier to collect - that's how its supposed to work..(Does
it ?). Google "Rod Truce" to find more papers on this technology.
There is an alternative method to abate back corona: Intermittent Energization or as some
call it Semipulse. Back Corona is created by the voltage drop across the dust layer on the
collection electrodes. With less current fed from the TRs the back corona can be kept low.
But then the charging of the particles in the ESP gas gets bad. In the 1980ies some smart
guys found out that by letting the TRs supply current in short intense bursts, the average
current could be kept low to minimize back corona, while at the same time the particle
charging remained excellent.
Simultaneously emission is reduced and TR power consumption becomes a fraction only.
Amazingly the stack plume may disappear, the TR power consumption can go to less than 5
% of TR rated abnd the kV and mA meters hardly move from their zero position.
The experts on this technology are all within Alstom. First papers they wrote stem back
from 1996. Google "alstom" and "Semipulse" to find papers. In the US abating back corona
in this way has not yet come much into use, mainly because back corona occurrs mainly
when the ash resistivity is very high. And most US coals give an ash that is not excessivley
high-resistive - mainly because of a high sulphur content in the coal (mostly above 1 %).