Clear Skies
Power Plant Developers Pitch a Coal-Fired Future
By Ken Wright, 1-26-06
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A giant coal-fired power plant proposed for northwestern New Mexico would lock the Four Corners into a future as the country’s “National Sacrifice Area,� and that area’s impoverished Navajo population would bear the brunt of those sacrifices. But in a presentation before the Navajo Tribal Council last week, the plant’s developers argued that the economic boost the project would give the tribe was worth that future.
This remote corner of the Navajo Nation is already home to two large power plants, the San Juan Generating Station and the Four Corners Power Plant. The San Juan facility have been cited and sued several times for Clean Air Act violations, and the government ranks the Four Corners plant as the worst in the country for nitrogen-oxide emissions.
Although new technology would the make the new plant less polluting than the older plants, the region itself, extending upwind into northern Arizona, is also already home to six of the nation’s 10 most-polluting power plants, earning the area the unofficial title of “National Sacrifice Area� since the 1960s.
Assuring its uncontested claim to that title for the foreseeable future, at least three other new coal plants are also proposed for the region, two near Farmington, NM, and one outside Grants, NM. Because of the existing plants, Farmington already suffers from air pollution nearly as severe as Houston. Studies on the San Juan and Four Corners plants also show that prevailing winds out of the southwest carry the plants’ plume of pollution up the Animas River Valley and into Durango and across the San Juan Mountains.
None of those match the scale and impact of The Desert Rock Energy Project, though. Proposed by Sithe Global Power, the $2.2 billion, 1,500 mega-watt coal-fired plant would sit on 580 acres on the Navajo Reservation at the mouth of the BHP mine, south of Shiprock, NM. It would supply power to Las Vegas and Phoenix – both up-wind cities -- via a new powerline, the construction of which, critics charge, would make sure the region is a major coal-burning region for at least the next century.
At the meeting held Friday with the Navajo Tribal Council in Window Rock, Ariz., though, proponents said the costs were worth the benefits. The tribal chapters surrounding the plant are some of the poorest on the reservation, some even without electricity despite their proximity to the existing power plants. Sithe Global officials touted $50 million a year in revenues from taxes, water payments and land leases, as well as hundreds of jobs from construction, then in the mine and at the plant.
The company hopes to have the plant in operation by 2010. The plant still needs several key approvals, though, before advancing. A draft environmental impact statement is also expected soon.
Until then, the Four Corners’ future is still, literally, up in the air.
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Comments
Posted by Steve Cone on 2:57 AM December 20, 2004.
TO: BIA, SITHE GLOBAL POWER, LLC, AND URS CORPORATION
RE: EIS FOR PROPOSED DESERT ROCK ENERGY PROJECT
FROM: Steve Cone
1217 Chaco Avenue
Farmington, NM 87401
505-327-0743
INTRODUCTION
As I said on 7 December at the scoping hearing in Farmington, the San Juan Basin [“Basin�] and Four Corners Area comprise a region that can best be viewed as a National Sacrifice Area in which rules, regulations, and statutes -- including the National Environmental Protection Act [“NEPA�] -- are routinely circumvented and purposely twisted by government and “cooperating� agencies to increase the profit and power of a favored few. This sort of corruption and abuse is magnified in the Basin due to the unparalleled allowances and exemptions which private businesses and corporations are afforded in joint agreements and lease arrangements with the federal and tribal governments on Indian trust lands. While corporate entities and influential tribal members may be well-served by such arrangements, widespread public concerns about environmental and socioeconomic impacts are routinely dismissed as irrelevant or “outside the scope� in federal assessments and studies of proposed projects.
Currently, Sithe Global Power, LLC, [“Sithe�] and The Navajo Nation are proposing to construct a Desert Rock Energy Project [“Project�] on federal tribal trust land on the Navajo reservation. Given the Project’s large size and the various other existing and proposed energy development and generation facilities in and adjacent to the Basin, a comprehensive evaluation of the Project’s cumulative impacts is of the utmost necessity.
As was repeatedly stated in the Farmington hearing, the Project is not being properly and adequately scoped. Therefore, Sithe (formerly STEAG), the BIA, URS, and the DinA Power Authority need to slow down, back up, and make an honest, wholehearted effort to get it right. If the Project sponsors and their consultants are unwilling to level with the public by acknowledging the real impacts and consequences of the proposed action as compared to a wide array of alternatives, then they should pack up their bags and go peddle their power project elsewhere.
SPECIFIC CONCERNS:
*** The purpose and need for the Project have not been adequately analyzed or established. What percentage of anticipated annual Project revenues will go to Sithe? What percentage of revenues generated will go to DinA Power Authority [“DPA�]? Of those revenues realized by DPA, what percentage will be tribal and what percentage will go to the non-tribal entities of the DPA?
*** Who will make use of the power generated by the Project? How much will be used by Navajo Nation tribal members? How much will be marketed off the reservation?
*** How much of the projected $6,000,000 cost of the Project (including the cost of water development and delivery) will be borne by Federal taxpayers?
*** To what extent will 638 contracts be utilized in the construction of the proposed Project, and how might 638-contracting drive up Project cost estimates and the ultimate cost of the Project?
*** How did STEAG become Sithe? Why did the corporation reorganize and who holds interests in the company? What prior experience does Sithe have in the field of power plant construction?
*** Evidently, recent testimony by representatives of the BHP corporation in connection with an air quality permit application indicated that emissions from another large coal fired power plant in the Basin would result in exceedance of significant impact levels
*** The Project Study Area has been arbitrarily restricted and narrowly limited in size. How were the parameters of the Project Study Area defined and who made this determination? The Project Study Area must be expanded to include (at a minimum) the downwind areas of Durango, Colorado and the Albuquerque/Santa Fe, New Mexico corridor.
*** How were decisions about the venues of scoping hearings made, and what agency/individuals were involved in the decision-making process? As was pointed out repeatedly in the comments in Farmington, deplorable decisions have been made about the location of scoping hearings. Whoever chose Flagstaff and Phoenix, Arizona as appropriate venues ought to have his head examined. The scoping process must be considered incomplete and inadequate until additional hearings are conducted in key Navajo Nation communities and Chapters, as well as Durango, Colorado, Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico.
*** The individual and cumulative human health impacts attributable to the Basin’s deteriorating regional air quality must be clearly identified. A comprehensive study of cancer rates and associated etiology needs to be conducted in an expanded Project Study Area, and the results need to be published as part of the NEPA process. Other cumulative health impacts associated with current air pollution levels must be identified and assessed. The incidence and relative severity of childhood respiratory illnesses such as asthma must be carefully documented. Can you say “choke�, “gasp�, “wheeze�, and “retch�?
*** Impacts of the Project to water quality and supply must be fully determined. Sithe has stated that the Project will deplete 4500 AFY of Basin surface water at a rate of 100 percent with zero return flows to the San Juan River. A frank discussion of Basin water rights and claims to water, settlements and adjudication proceedings must be included in the scoping process. What are the associated potential impacts of the Project to water quality (TDML) and to the endangered fish species’ habitat along the San Juan River? If ground water is to be tapped, to what extent might cavitation impact cultural and archaeological resources in the Basin?
*** An accurate cumulative visibility analysis must be completed and made available to the public. When will it be done and how will it be disseminated?
*** The federal government’s penchant for servicing corporate interests at the expense of public health is manifest in the flawed modeling scheme used to estimate air pollution impacts of the proposed Project. Air pollution modeling now in use supports the unrestrained growth and pure-profit motives of the energy extraction and power development interests in the Basin. Current air pollution monitoring techniques are inadequate, intentionally haphazard, and downright deceptive. This would be laughable if it was not so tragic. Such bad-science modeling generates data driven by preordained results rendered in deference to the agenda of the Basin’s energy industry. Is there anyone so naive as to actually believe that public input is taken seriously in the NEPA process, when our top agents and officials are joined at the hip to industry executives and brazenly provide cartes blanches to energy corporations?
*** In addition to the Project, the long list of energy development proposals in the Basin includes over 12,000 new coal-bed methane and oil and gas wells, the Peabody Mustang Power Plant, and a Ute Mountain Ute power generation facility. If the Project is properly considered in conjunction with these other new and proposed major sources of air pollution, the result would be significant air quality degradation incompatible with specific provisions and goals of the Clean Air Act. The bottom line is that if serious, full consideration is not given to the cumulative impacts of federally sanctioned projects in the Basin, the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (“EIS�) document associated with the Project ought to be issued with an audio CD to be played as background mood music. One appropriate selection would be “Piece of My Heart� from the 1968 album Cheap Thrills by Big Brother & the Holding Company replete with the lyrics:
……….
I need you to come on, come on, come on, come on and take it,
Take it!
Take another little piece of my heart now, baby!
Oh, oh break it!
Break another little bit of my heart now, darling, yeah, c’mon now.
Oh, oh, have another little piece of my heart now, baby.
You know you got it -- whoahhhhh!!
Take it!
Have another little piece of my heart now, baby, hey,
You know you got it, child, if it makes you feel good.
……..
… and the Basin should receive official designation as a National Sacrifice Area.
*** The Project EIS should recognize the reality and ripple effects of the Peak Oil phenomenon and the profound impact dwindling oil reserves will continue to have on gas and coal development. There is intense political pressure (misguided as it is) to support a rapid, almost frenetic expansion of fossil fuel development, even as we come to the end of the Age of Oil and face the beginning of the end of industrialized civilization.
*** Disraeli was right in his observation that there are “lies, damn lies and statistics�. There is concern that the cumulative increment analysis presented by Sithe in connection with its May 2004 application is fundamentally and fatally flawed. Sithe’s claim for credit for inapplicable emission reductions at San Juan and Four Corners power plants is unjustifiable and not allowable. Overall, discrepancies and deficiencies in Sithe’s assumptions, methodology and data necessitate that the cumulative increment analysis be redone and completed so as to provide reliable and valid results.
*** A twelve month series of analyses by Alpine Geophysics and ENVIRON was recently completed in conjunction with San Juan County’s Early Action Compact for Ozone. The resulting data has been analyzed in a "Maintenance for Growth and Control Strategy Modeling Report" (Feb. 2004). This report includes data pertinent to the assessment of potential impacts of the Project.
The Farmington Daily Times reported last week that the anger of many citizens commenting at the Project scoping hearing was palpable. Much of this outrage seems to stem from a perception in the minds of the public that they are viewed simply as a nuisance, that their concerns are insignificant, and that their participation in the process is irrelevant to the final outcome. I am hopeful that my comments will be weighed with thoughtful consideration, and that decisions regarding the Project will be based on the consent of the governed and, not, as has so often been the case, an arrogant and willful contempt of the governed.
A-LP Central -- http://www.alpcentral.com
Thanks.