Plant’s Restart Not Near

Southern California Edison Co. said Thursday it had given up an effort to quickly restart its giant Mohave power plant, which was shut down Jan. 1 for failing to comply with pollution standards.

The utility had hoped to cut a deal with environmentalists to put the coal-fired power plant back on line within the next few months. Located in Laughlin, Nev., the plant had been a cheap source of electricity for Southern California for 36 years.

But Edison, which holds a 56% controlling interest in Mohave, said in a statement that it had “reluctantly concluded” that it faced “too much uncertainty to warrant continued aggressive effort” to reopen the plant in the near future.

Edison said it continued to negotiate with two northern Arizona Indian tribes and a mining company about coal and water supplies for the generating station. Peabody Energy Corp., which mines the Indian land, uses the water to push pulverized coal through a 273-mile pipeline to Mohave.

Once an agreement is reached, the utility would begin the process of installing $1.1 billion in pollution equipment in the hope of restarting the plant by 2010.

The high-tech scrubbers are needed to comply with a 1999 legal settlement of a lawsuit brought by the Grand Canyon Trust and two other environmental organizations under the U.S. Clean Air Act. The plant, which produced about 7% of Southern California’s electricity before being mothballed, was one of the biggest sources of sulfur dioxide emissions in the West. It also created haze that obscured views at Grand Canyon National Park.

Edison, a unit of Rosemead-based Edison International, also said it would be forced to lay off 82 of Mohave’s 306 employees by July 1.

The environmental groups said Edison approached them in late December and early January about reaching an interim agreement that would allow the plant to keep running without pollution controls.

“They, in fact, floated a proposal, but it was a nonstarter,” said Bill Hedden, executive director of the Grand Canyon Trust.

The environmentalists told Edison to sort out the water supply issues with the Navajo Nation and the Hopi tribe before trying to even temporarily waive the federal court consent decree on pollution controls, Hedden said.

Since then, “they have not come back with any stronger proposal,” he said. Edison declined to elaborate on its written statement.

A continued shutdown of Mohave should not affect Southern California’s ability to obtain sufficient electricity, even if hotter-than-normal temperatures stress the region’s power grid this summer, said Joseph Desmond, chairman of the California Energy Commission.

“We assumed it would not be available,” he said.