Cleanup of Nevada Power Plant Proposed

Southern California Edison has proposed spending up to $350 million to significantly curtail air pollution from its Mohave Generating Station, the single largest source of sulfur dioxide pollution in the Southwest and a prime suspect for the summer haze that blurs visibility at the Grand Canyon.

For years, the company has insisted that pollution control equipment would cost more than the giant power plant in Lauglin, Nev., is worth. Now, as the company considers selling the plant, Edison officials have reversed course--at least in part.

The company’s plan, announced Friday, would take nearly a decade to complete and ultimately would reduce sulfur dioxide emissions by 80%.

The company hopes to convince the many groups with an interest in the plant to sign on to its proposal. If the proposal is not accepted, though, Edison has threatened to close the plant by 2008.

Looming over the Nevada desert, the coal-fired Mohave plant has always been a mixed blessing. It lights more than 1 million homes in Nevada and Southern California, provides jobs for nearly 1,000 people and is the largest source of income for two Indian tribes who supply the coal, but is also one of the nation’s leading producers of greenhouse gases. Edison owns the largest share of the plant, which is partly owned by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

Environmentalists and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have been pushing for a 90% reduction in emissions and a faster timetable than Edison is proposing. Nonetheless, they reacted with guarded enthusiasm to a proposal they described as a good, if flawed, first step.

“We had all been trying to figure out what to do about this plant, and this proposal represents something of a breakthrough,” said Nancy Sutley, a senior policy advisor with the EPA.

“But 10 years is a long time given the visibility problems in the Grand Canyon,” Sutley said.

Sutley and representatives of the Grand Canyon Trust, one of two environmental organizations suing Edison over the plant’s pollution, called the 80% goal disappointing.

“The equipment now available can take care of at least 90%,” said Reed Zars, a Wyoming lawyer representing the Grand Canyon Trust in its suit against the plant.

“Eighty percent is a high enough number so that it is not an insult, but it’s at the absolute bottom end of what you would expect from the equipment,” said Mary Nichols, a former EPA air quality expert who is now heading the Los Angeles-based group Environment Now.

That group has been asked by Edison to participate in a series of meetings to discuss the merits of the plan.

Edison officials said that reducing the emissions could exact a cost, environmentally and socially. Efficient operation of the pollution control equipment will require a lot more water than the plant currently uses, they said

“Implementing the controls while remaining economically viable will be a challenge,” said Tom Higgins, Edison’s vice president for corporate communications.

Depending on the price of electricity in a newly competitive market, said Edison spokesmen, the company might be forced to renegotiate the price of coal it purchases from the Navajo and Hopi nations of Arizona and New Mexico.

“We hope the configuration of control systems will be such that that plant remains viable,” said Mike Hertel, Edison’s manager of environmental affairs. “It is hard to say whether we will have to renegotiate the contracts. That depends on the electricity market.”

Hertel conceded that there is pollution control equipment on the market that can reduce emissions by more than 80%, but he said the cleaner technology consumes even more water and generates more waste.

Because of the many questions surrounding the plan, Edison has proposed a series of collaborations to work out the details with a variety of affected parties, including EPA officials, environmental groups, Native Americans, plant employees and people from communities near the plant.

“We’re going into this collaborative process with the stakeholders with the position that we will install the pollution control devices no later than 2008 or the plant will shut down,” Higgins said.

Despite the proposal for a collaborative process, Hopi Tribal Chairman Wayne Taylor Jr. said the plan was a unilateral action by the owners of the plant that “violates an understanding . . . that the Hopi would have an opportunity for meaningful input.”

Edison’s action, he said, “creates a situation where those with the most at risk, the Hopi, are being dictated to by those with the most to gain--the companies.”

Edison holds the largest interest in the plant among four co-owners. In addition to the DWP, the other owners are Nevada Power and Arizona’s Salt River Project. Representatives of all four spoke in support of the pollution control plan in a statement released by Edison.

At various times, each of those owners has considered selling the plant in order to get out of the increasingly competitive power generation business. Cleaning up the plant could make it more attractive for a potential buyer.

The plan also comes as the EPA completes a study, mandated by Congress, to investigate the sources of haze over the Grand Canyon.

A draft of the study so far has concluded that “sulfur emissions from the plant are actually arriving at the Grand Canyon,” said the EPA’s Sutley. The precise impact of those emissions on formation of the haze remains “a little inconclusive,” she said.

Edison officials acknowledged that the study indicated the plant could be a culprit.

“It could not measure a statistical contribution to Grand Canyon haze,” said Nader Mansour, manager of environmental regulation at Edison. “But they were able to model that under certain circumstances . . . it may be possible for the plant to have a contribution.”

Although the study did not cause Edison to propose the pollution control plan, Higgins said, “it was clearly in the long-term interests of the communities served by the plant that we try to bring some resolution to the future of the plant.”

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Power Plant Proposal

Southern California Edison is proposing installation of pollution control equipment at its Mohave power plant in Laughlin, Nev. Coal for the plant is supplied by the Black Mesa Mine in Arizona. If environmental groups don’t accept the proposal, the plant could close, which would eliminate the largest source of private income for the Hopi and Navajo Indians of Arizona and New Mexico.