Durango – The permit-seeking Desert Rock Energy Facility would be one of the cleanest coal-fired power plants in the country and an economic powerhouse for the Navajo Nation.
But many Four Corners residents hotly oppose it because they say the air in the region is already being fouled by two existing plants and by oil and gas development.
Elevated ozone levels and mercury contamination are already serious problems here, many people told Environmental Protection Agency officials at hearings Tuesday and Wednesday in Durango and Shiprock, N.M.
Houston-based Sithe Global Power wants to build the Desert Rock plant in partnership with the tribe’s Dine Power Authority about 25 miles southwest of Farmington, N.M.
Lars Holbek, who lives between Farmington and Durango, said he has a clear view of emissions from plants on or near the reservation.
“We can see their plumes, and half the days of the year are very hazy,” he said.
By 2000, the EPA estimated that those plants were emitting amounts of nitrogen oxides equivalent to 3.5 million cars. The 43-year-old Four Corners plant run by Arizona Public Service, by far the worst polluter among existing plants in the area, was the region’s first and was built before tougher regulations came into play.
“The fact of the matter is we’re fighting ghosts of the past,” said Sithe spokesman Frank Maisano.
There are 18 coal-fired plants on or near the Colorado Plateau, the 130,000-square-mile geological formation that defines Western vistas from the Grand Canyon to Colorado National Monument, and from Mesa Verde to Zion national parks. And there are proposals for 30 more conventional coal-fired plants in seven Western states, including several in the Four Corners states.
The West probably will need as many as 80,000 additional megawatts in the next 20 years, Maisano said. Desert Rock is billed as a 1,500-megawatt plant.
He said the project will generate more than $50 million each year for the Navajo Nation and will bring 400 permanent jobs.
The EPA said the Desert Rock facility would not cause regional air- pollution levels to exceed limits allowed under the Clean Air Act. The agency acknowledged that the proposed plant, when its emissions are added to those of existing plants, could cause haze-forming sulfur dioxide to sometimes exceed the “significant impact level,” which is still legal, at six sensitive areas, including two wilderness areas – Weminuche in Colorado and San Pedro Parks in New Mexico; three national parks – Mesa Verde in Colorado, Canyonlands in Utah and Petrified Forest in Arizona; and Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico.
“We are concerned about it, and we are working on possible mitigation,” said John Reber, an air- resource coordinator with the National Park Service.
The San Juan Citizens Alliance said the draft permit does not accurately quantify air quality in the Four Corners.
The EPA’s modeling was flawed because air monitors were located only at Farmington and at Rio Rancho, near Albuquerque, alliance spokesman Mike Eisenfeld said. The agency also failed to account for other sources of pollution, including nitrogen oxides from 18,000 active oil and gas wells in the San Juan Basin, Eisenfeld said.
Bureau of Land Management models show that emissions from gas development in the area already have exceeded standards for nitrogen oxides. And the BLM has proposed allowing another 10,000 wells over the next few decades.
“It looks like we need to go back and look again at nitrogen oxides and ozone concentrations,” the EPA’s Colleen McKaughan said.
