PHOENIX — Gov. Jan Brewer is siding with the operators of a major coal-fired power plant who don't want to spend the money to improve visibility at the Grand Canyon and other national parks.
In a letter to the U.S. Environmental Protect Agency, Brewer criticized the move to require the utilities that own the Navajo Generating Station to install expensive pollution- control equipment. Brewer said requiring the "best available retrofit technology" at the plant "offers minimal benefits and possible risks."
The plan to reduce affected pollutants proposed by the EPA, she said, would be 50 percent more effective than less expensive technology. Yet the cost, Brewer said, would be 10 times as much, passed along to customers of the utilities that own the facility, including Tucson Electric Power, Arizona Public Service and Salt River Project.
The governor said those higher costs also would raise what the Central Arizona Project has to pay for pumping costs of Colorado River water.
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David Modeer, CAP general manager, said the plant was built largely to provide power for the series of pumps needed to push the water uphill by nearly 3,000 feet so it can reach Tucson. In fact, the CAP, through the Bureau of Reclamation, has a 24.3 percent ownership in the plant.
He pegged the cost of what the EPA wants at $1 billion, with the CAP having to pass on its costs to consumers, including cities that purchase water.
Brewer said Tucson would be especially hard hit: By 2020, 80 percent of city water will come from the project.
She also warned: "Navajo Generating Station probably cannot economically sustain costs of that magnitude and may need to cease operations." Aside from affecting the utilities and the CAP, that would undermine the finances of the Navajo and Hopi reservations.
But Sierra Club lobbyist Sandy Bahr said the time is long past to upgrade pollution equipment at the power plant, which started operations in 1974.
Bahr acknowledged that much at issue involves visual pollution rather than any health risks. But she said cleaning the air, especially in the Grand Canyon, "is pretty darn important, some might say priceless."
She said the National Park Service estimates that the power plant emits more than 34,000 tons of oxides of nitrogen a year, resulting in impaired visibility.
Modeer said plant owners already are installing adequate, less-expensive pollution-control equipment.
"All of the studies show that the improvement in visibility by going to the extreme case is such a small incremental improvement that the human eye wouldn't even notice," he said.
Modeer said he fears other utilities with an ownership stake in the plant, including Tucson Electric Power, will decide it's not worth making the investment, and the plant will be shut.
Bahr, though, said the spending would only be considered excessive "if you were talking about a clean plant."
"We're not," she said. "They have old technology. It's time for them to update it, clean it up."
THE LOCAL ANGLE
The more expensive technology upgrade to reduce pollutant emissions from the Navajo Generating Station would cost Tucson Electric Power Co. about $50 million, said TEP spokesman Joe Salkowski.
The less expensive technology would cost $3 million, he said.
TEP shares Gov. Jan Brewer's concerns about spending extra cash on technology that would result in only a "relatively modest improvement" in emissions, Salkowski said.
It's too early to know how rates would be affected, but the additional $47 million would get passed along to customers, Salkowski said.
TEP has a 7.5 percent share of three of the units at the Navajo Generating Station and it gets 168 megawatts of power from the plant.
— Dale Quinn