Ray Ring

Senior Editor

Coal-burning power plants make half the nation’s electricity, but to many of us, they resemble dinosaurs that refuse to die. That’s because they’re the dirtiest method of generating electricity. That’s true even for the newer coal plants that boast of having “supercritical” boilers and “circulating fluidized beds” and “activated carbon injection.” They all come down to burning pulverized coal — a process that typically emits mercury compounds, heavy metals, global warming gases and other pollutants.

Yet proposals for new pulverized-coal plants continue to advance around the West, often against local opposition.

“Apathy is not an option,” says Ken Stevens, a resident of Utah’s rural Sevier County. He’s definitely not apathetic about a Nevada company’s plan to build a coal plant in his county, about 150 miles west of Moab. This coal plant would have a 460-foot-tall smokestack, and many locals like Stevens think it would “ruin the community’s farmland character and sully the skies,” according the Salt Lake Tribune. At a public comment session run by the county commissioners, speakers opposed the plant “by a nearly 6-to-1 margin,” the Trib reports.

Meanwhile, Houston-based Sithe Global Power wants to build a coal plant on the Navajo reservation in northwest New Mexico, to sell electricity to cities around the Southwest. And it has support from the Navajo government, which sees the coal plant in terms of jobs and tax collections. According to the Associated Press:

“We’re scared,” said Sarah White, a member of Dooda Desert Rock Committee, a group that has been fighting the proposed plant. “We’re scared for our future generations.”

White and other critics are concerned that two existing power plants in the region already spew tons of emissions into the air, and any additional pollution would only make air quality worse.

Double meanwhile, power-generating companies in Arizona have beaten environmentalists in a court battle, so it looks like they’ll be able to tack an additional coal-burning plant onto three existing plants at Springerville, according to the Arizona Daily Star.

And in Montana, a new grass-roots group called “Coal Plant Concerned Citizens” has sprung up (what else do new grass-roots groups do?) to oppose the construction of a new coal plant in Great Falls. Bob Quinn, a guy who builds wind farms, tells the Great Falls Tribune that “a wind power plant could be built much cheaper than the proposed coal plant.” Quinn makes a good summation:

“The discussion should be ‘what kind of power plant.’”

Triple meanwhile, Wyoming has just submitted its application attempting to get huge federal subsidies to build “the world’s first zero-emissions coal-fired power plant,” according to the Associated Press.

A “zero-emissions” plant would use a true advance in technology, the IGCC process, which converts coal to a synthetic gas such as hydrogen. All sorts of interests are scrambling to get subsidies to make the technological breakthrough, the Casper Star-Tribune reports.

And as usual, High Country News helps to lead the news coverage. HCN had a recent cover story on an Idaho citizen revolt that effectively pulverized a pulverized-coal-plant proposal. The story package included profiles of nine of the rebels, including Republican politicians, farmers, and a Benedictine monk. And it explained how the West’s most muscular Republican, California’s Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, is one of the heavyweights pushing for IGCC and clean-coal technology.

For more info on the battles against dirty coal plants, and the push for clean coal, check the websites of some of the leading environmental groups on these issues: Western Resource Advocates and the Montana Environmental Information Center.