Clean Energy In the News

Daniel Cusick, E&ENews PM reporter

U.S. EPA issued <permits today for a 1,500-megawatt coal-fired power plant in the high desert of northwest New Mexico, where Sithe Global Power LLC and the Navajo Nation hope to sell electricity to energy-hungry cities and suburbs in the Southwest.

The Desert Rock Energy Station is planned for a site owned by the Navajo tribe roughly 25 miles southwest of Farmington, in the Four Corners region of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado.

Designs call for building two 750-megawatt supercritical pulverized coal-fired boilers that would burn low-sulfur subbituminous coal mined by the Navajo Nation.

While Houston-based Sithe Global Energy and the Navajo Nation, operating under the name Diné Power Authority, have promoted the project's advanced air pollution controls, environmental groups remain concerned that the power plant will sully air quality in one of the nation's unique landscapes.

The Four Corners region is home to national parks, monuments and forests -- including Mesa Verde, Canyonlands and Arches national parks -- which attract millions of visitors annually to see rock formations carved by wind and water over the millennia.

The plant's primary emissions would be controled using low-nitrogen oxide burners, selective catalytic reduction units for nitrogen oxides, wet limestone desulfurization units for sulfur dioxide and a fabric filter to control particulate matter, according to terms set by EPA, which has primary authority over the project, since it will be sited on federally owned land. The agency's Region 9 office in San Francisco issued the permits.

Joe Shirley Jr., president of the Navajo Nation, issued a statement today welcoming the long-awaited federal permit approval. The tribe sued EPA earlier this year, accusing the agency of foot-dragging in its review of the permit application, initially filed in 2004.

The $3 billion plant is expected to provide up to 1,000 construction jobs over the next four years and will bring more than $50 million in annual revenue to the Navajo Nation, according to tribal estimates.

"As a nation, we're working very hard toward standing on our own two feet, and this permit goes a long ways to bringing all that into fruition," Shirley said.

Wayne Nastri, EPA's Region 9 administrator, said the agency's technical analysis determined that the Desert Rock facility would be among the cleanest pulverized coal units in the country, and that its emissions levels would be set to provide adequate safeguards for human and environmental health.

Beyond the pollution controls required under its air permits, the power plant's developers have also agreed to further reduce emissions in the region by purchasing sulfur dioxide credits from other emission sources and funding other projects aimed at preventing air pollution.

Criticism

But critics, who have pledged to challenge the Desert Rock permits in federal court, say the Four Corners region already suffers from pollution emitted from two other coal plants, and that the Desert Rock plant will only exacerbate existing problems.

"If the coal plant is built, it will add to health problems already facing tribal members and residents of both New Mexico and Colorado," said Andy Bessler of the Sierra Club.

Such criticism were shared by some members of the Navajo tribe, organized under the name Diné CARE.

Dailan Long, an opposition organizer within the tribe, called EPA's permit approval an "irresponsible decision ... [that] has failed Navajo communities and needlessly sacrificed our air, land and water."

Other critics have argued the construction of a large coal-fired power plant in New Mexico will undermine efforts within the Four Corners region to rein in carbon dioxide, the world's most abundant greenhouse gas. The facility is expected to emit roughly 12.5 million tons of CO2 annually.

Vickie Patton, a senior attorney for Environmental Defense, was sharply critical of EPA's decision not to include CO2 in its review of Desert Rock's pollution impacts.

Environmental Defense is among a number of groups challenging permits issued to coal-fired plants on grounds that such actions violate the Supreme Court's 2007 Massachusetts v. EPA ruling, which affirmed EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.