State, Utilities Oppose EPA Visibility Plan
By Howard Fischer
July 28, 2012
State officials and utilities are trying to kill a plan by the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency to force owners of three coal-fired power plants
to install expensive pollution control equipment to improve visibility.
Henry Darwin, director of the state Department of Environmental Quality, said
the federal proposal to reduce oxides of nitrogen, known in the business as NOx,
will impose hundreds of millions of dollars of unnecessary costs on utilities —
and, by extension, their customers.
More to the point, Darwin pointed out that the reduction being proposed has
absolutely nothing to do with public health.
Instead, it focuses on EPA’s claim that the pollutants are impairing visibility
in the Grand Canyon and other natural parks.
But Darwin insisted that there would be “no discernible identifiable
difference’’ in visibility between the less-expensive plan his agency is pushing
and what the EPA wants.
Gov. Jan Brewer has her own theory about the push.
“I don’t think it has anything to do with air quality,’’ she told Capitol Media
Services.
“It has everything to do with the Obama administration going to war on coal,’’
Brewer continued. “It’s more about politics and not science.’’
But EPA spokeswoman Margo Perez-Sullivan said that ignores one simple fact: It
was Congress that enacted the law more than a decade ago requiring her agency to
take the steps now to begin reducing visual pollution, not the current
administration.
The fight pits questions of visibility against economics: What’s it worth to
restore the Grand Canyon and a dozen other federal parks and wilderness areas to
the point where the air looks like it did before there were the power plants and
other sources of visual pollution.
Congress approved laws in the 1990s requiring restoration of “natural
visibility’’ in these parks by 2064. More immediately, states are required to
show they are making reasonable progress toward that goal.
But unlike laws on health effects, Congress specifically said the plans have to
be based on a cost-benefit analysis, weighing the price tag against the
improvement.
What brings the issue up now is that the federal Clean Air Act specifically
requires power plants built between 1967 and 1977 to adopt the “best available
retrofit technology’’ to improve visibility within 300 kilometers, about 186
miles. Each state was given the chore of doing that analysis.
EPA did accept DEQ’s proposals for cutting sulfur dioxide and particulates. But
it rejected the state’s analysis of costs versus benefits for NOx.
“We believe that we propose a cost-effective solution,’’ Darwin said. That
generally involves relying on burners designed to reduce pollutants; the EPA is
instead pushing more expensive catalytic converts.
Kelly Barr, senior director of environmental policy management at Salt River
Project, whose Coronado power plant is being targeted, said her utility already
has spent $500 million installing a catalytic converter on one of the two units
of its Coronado plant near St. Johns.
But Barr said EPA now wants an even more effective converter on the other plant,
something she said would add another $110 million in expenses.
Barr said she cannot say what that translates to in customer costs. But she said
a “significant portion’’ of SRP’s current 4.8 percent rate hike is linked to
paying off that first $500 million.
Ed Fox, Barr’s counterpart at Arizona Public Service, told a similar story.
He said APS already voluntarily spent $324 million installing pollution control
equipment on its Cholla power plant near Holbrook. He said the EPA mandate would
cost another $182 million in equipment, plus operating expenses.
“For what?’’ he asked. “For a change in emission reductions that won’t be
humanly perceptible?’’
That’s also the assessment of Geoff Oldfather of the Arizona Electric Power
Cooperative, whose Apache Power plant in Cochise is one of those affected. He
said spending the extra money EPA wants for catalytic converters over the change
in burners proposed by DEQ, would result in an “imperceptible’’ difference in
visibility.
“We don’t agree,’’ responded Colleen McKaughan. She is the EPA’s associate
director of the agency’s regional air quality division.
She said EPA’s own studies show there would be a “perceptible’’ difference,
especially when the combined effects of the three Arizona power plants are
concerned.
Fox agreed with Brewer that the rules seem to have an agenda beyond visibility.
“It seems pretty clear that the direction the EPA has taken under this
administration, based upon environmental issues, is to impose significant costs
on fossil plants which will make them uneconomic,’’ he said. Fox said that is
not just rhetoric, saying that if the federal agency does not back down APS may
have to close down one of the units at its Cholla plant.
Brewer said that’s why the federal government should leave the question of
what’s appropriate to each state.
“They give no consideration about the jobs that are going to be lost because of
their overregulation and the higher energy costs for the Arizona energy
consumers,’’ she said. And Brewer said if the federal government really believes
that the difference in visibility is worth the expense, “then send the billion
dollars it’s going to cost to implement it.’’
McKaughan said her agency is weighing the costs in relation to the benefits. But
she said there is no specific formula.
“There is no bright line,’’ she said. “This a case-by-case analysis.’’
What that means, she said, is looking at each power plant and determining both
the capital costs of the retrofit and the operating costs. And that also
includes the ability of a plant owner to recoup the costs over the next 20
years.
But the bottom line, she said, is that EPA has the research to show that people
will be able to see the difference once the pollutants are removed from the air
— and that what is being proposed will not be an undue financial hardship on the
affected utilities.
What’s missing from that, said Darwin, is some common sense — particularly since
the law does not require the restoration of pollution-free conditions until
2064.
The next step in the battle takes place Tuesday evening at a public hearing at
the federal courthouse in Phoenix. EPA also agreed this past week to two
additional hearings next month, one in Holbrook and the other in Benson.
But McKaughan said that Nov. 15 deadline remains firm.
http://www.svherald.com/content/news/2012/07/28/318656