by FELICIA FONSECA, Associated Press
Writer
Mercury News
10 June 2009
FLAGSTAFF,
Ariz.—The owners of the shuttered Mohave Generating Station in
Laughlin, Nev., said Wednesday that they will decommission the
coal-fired power plant that once supplied electricity to 1.5
million homes.
Southern
California Edison operated the 1,580-megawatt plant since it came
on line in 1971, and the company owned 56 percent of the facility
on the Colorado River.
Edison shut down
the plant in 2006 because it needed pollution-control upgrades to
comply with a 1999 Clean Air Act settlement, a new water supply
and pipeline upgrades costing $1.1 billion.
The plant's owners
said they will decommission the plant and remove the generating
facility from the 2,470-acre site. The dismantling is expected to
start later this year and take about two years and $30 million to
complete. Transmission lines and a switchyard will remain on site.
The plant's
operating permits will be terminated next year.
Without a buyer
for the plant, Edison spokesman Gil Alexander said the utility was
left with two options—to decommission the plant and either sell
the property or construct a renewable energy project.
"The owners have
concluded that selling the plant is not a viable option,"
Alexander said.
Edison has studied
the property, its topography and the climate and found that
portions of the site could be used to generate solar power, but
more detailed assessments are needed before a decision is made,
Alexander said.
The 21 employees
still working at the Mohave site will be offered other positions
within the utility for which they are qualified, he said. The
Mohave plant had been one of the largest sources of pollution in
the West. Environmentalists for decades blamed it for degrading
views at the Grand Canyon and said it emitted high amounts of
sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and fine particulates.
They sued under
the Clean Air Act to force the plant to add modern pollution
controls like scrubbers, a filter system and new burners to reduce
emissions by Jan. 1, 2006, or shut down. Edison had planned to
upgrade and restart the plant but said later that year that it
needed too many repairs for the effort to go forward.
Roger Clark, air
and energy director for the Grand Canyon Trust in Flagstaff, one
of the groups that sued, said he's pleased the owners will
dismantle the plant and are considering renewable energy.
"It's the final
chapter on the story of Mohave as a coal plant," Clark said.
"Until the owners decided to go ahead and decommission it and take
it apart, there was always a chance someone could buy it and crank
it up again."
The Salt River
Project, which owns 20 percent of the plant, had sought to take
over operation from Edison, but abandoned the effort in 2007 after
its offer to buy Edison's ownership interest was rebuffed.
Other owners of
the plant included Nevada Power Co. with 14 percent and the Los
Angeles Department of Water and Power with 10 percent.
The plant had been
fueled by coal from the Hopi and Navajo reservations in northeast
Arizona, mixed with water and transported by a 273-mile pipeline
to the plant. When the plant closed, so did the Black Mesa Mine in
Kayenta, delivering a substantial blow to the economies of the
tribes.
George Hardeen, a
spokesman for Navajo President Joe Shirley Jr., said the tribe
held out hope that Mohave might reopen, but none of the talks bore
fruit. The tribe has not been able to replace the $29 million in
annual coal revenues from the mine that supplied coal exclusively
to Mohave.
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