For Immediate Release: Monday, March 22, 2010 Contacts: • Charles Benjamin, Western Resource Advocates - (775) 671-5690 • Tim Hay, Former Public Utilities Commissioner and Nevada Consumer Advocate - (775) 771-9007 • Michele Burkett, Defend Our Desert - (801) 557-8823 • Emily Rhodenbaugh, Coal Organizer, Sierra Club - (513) 706-5059
LAS VEGAS, Nevada – A decision by the Sithe Global Energy to abandon a proposal for a new coal-burning power plant near Mesquite, Nevada drew praise from a diverse group of voices who applauded the end to one of the last remaining obstacles in the state’s transition to a full-fledged clean energy economy.
Sithe’s parent company, the Blackstone Group, officially announced on a conference call this afternoon that it was dropping the proposed 750-megawatt Toquop Energy Project. Joining Blackstone’s Tony James was Senator Harry Reid and Mesquite Mayor Susan Holecheck. The company said that it is instead pursuing a 700-MW natural gas plant with a 100-MW photovoltaic solar plant.
“With its vast wind, solar and geothermal resources and potential for meeting demand with energy efficiency programs, the decision to move away from coal really does bode well for Nevada,” said Charles Benjamin, the state director of Western Resource Advocates. “It opens doors to an even swifter transition to 21st century energy technologies that will create jobs and revitalize Nevada’s economy.”
Early in 2009, there were still three proposals for new coal-burning power plants in Nevada, which would have generated 4,850 megawatts of electricity, enough to power roughly four million homes. NV Energy shelved its 2,500 MW Ely Energy Center in February and LS Power followed a month later when it abandoned plans for the 1,600-MW White Pine Energy Station. Both companies, whose plants would have been located near Ely, cited the financial risks, uncertainty of coal and the desire to move forward with projects focused more on renewable energy technologies. Toquop was the last of the three plants still moving forward.
“Nevada’s future lies with clean renewable energy, not outdated fossil fuel technologies,” said Steve Rypka, a renewable energy and green living consultant who owns GreenDream Enterprises in Henderson. “Clearing the last obstacle out of the way for that to happen is a big step forward for Nevada.”
Residents of Mesquite and southeastern Nevada, along with their counterparts just across the border in southwestern Utah, had fought the Toquop plant for years over concerns about pollution from its smokestacks and the effect on scarce local water resources. They said Sithe’s decision would help protect the region’s air quality and public health.
“We can all breathe a little easier now,” said Michele Burkett of the group Defend Our Desert. “Now we hope that this can pave the way for Nevada to become our nation’s leader in developing home-grown clean, renewable energy. That will enable us to become an energy exporter while growing our own economy with good long-term jobs.”
Former Public Utilities Commissioner and Nevada Consumer Advocate Tim Hay said the decision by Sithe and Blackstone are in line with trends by utilities and power companies nationwide. In the last several years, more than 125 proposals for coal-burning plants have been halted as developers or regulators determine that there are affordable and reliable options to coal that don’t have its financial risks or require the expenditure of billions of dollars.
“More and more power providers and investors are realizing the high risks associated with coal, while at the same time looking for ways that new and existing demand can be met with a combination of cleaner energy sources and also a full menu of energy efficiency measures,” said Hay. “Ultimately, that’s good for both shareholders and rate-paying customers."
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All fish caught in U.S.-tested streams have mercury
Sport fishers, take heed: A government test of fish pulled from nearly 300 streams in the USA found every one of them contaminated with some level of mercury.
The research by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) marks its most comprehensive examination of mercury contamination in stream fish. The study found that 27% of the fish had mercury levels high enough to exceed what the Environmental Protection Agency considers safe for the average fish eater, those who eat fish twice a week.
But the findings in wild-caught fish underscore how widespread mercury contamination in the nation's waterways has become. Previous research has found levels of concern in ocean and lake fish.
Both air quality and visibility would be affected in the Great Basin National Park if one or both of two coal-fired power plants were operated in White Pine County, a Government Accountability Office report said.
The park, created in 1986 as a representative 77,000 acres of the larger Great Basin, has some of the cleanest air and best visibility in the United States, the GAO report said.
Lincoln County's water district and its partner in water resource development, Vidler Water Co., charge in a new lawsuit that the state engineer's office was biased against them with a ruling potentially thwarting their development plans for desert land north of Mesquite.
In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court Tuesday, the water district north of Las Vegas and the company complain that State Engineer Tracy Taylor and Acting State Engineer Jason King violated their constitutional rights to due process with an April ruling.
A coalition of environmental groups launched a campaign today aimed at persuading investors in new coal-fired power plants to invest in renewable energy instead of coal.
Ten environmental groups are hoping to convince the investment company Blackstone Group LP and its subsidiary Sithe Global to drop plans for three new coal-fired power plants, citing concerns about emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants, as well as other environmental and economic concerns.
Environmentalists and politicians are turning up the heat on coal plants proposed by the investment giant.
By
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, senior writer
NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Throughout the West - in Colorado, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming - battles are raging over proposed coal plants. Caught up in two big ones is The Blackstone Group, the global asset manager than went public last year.
Blackstone (BX) owns 80 percent of Sithe Global Power, an independent power producer. Sithe wants to build a 1,500-megawatt plant, known as Desert Rock, on land governed by the Navajo Nation in New Mexico. It also wants to build a 750-megawatt plant called Toquop in southeast Nevada.
DENVER - Backers of the proposed Desert Rock power plant have asked a federal appeals board to reinstate the plant's air-pollution permit, which the Environmental Protection Agency took back in April.
Meanwhile, Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter pressed his argument against the New Mexico power plant to the White House's senior environmental official this week at a meeting in Park City, Utah.
Desert Rock took its case to the EPA's Environmental Appeals Board last Thursday, calling the permit revocation "unprecedented."
"The board's decision in this case will reflect on the integrity of EPA as an institution and its respect for basic notions of fairness and due process," wrote Jeffrey Holmstead, lawyer for Desert Rock.
The Desert Rock Energy Project is run by the Navajo Nation and New York-based Sithe Global. It would put a coal power plant on Navajo land near Shiprock, the same region as the existing Four Corners Power Plant and San Juan Generating Station. By some measures, the two existing plants are some of the nation's dirtiest.
Just days before Christmas last year, an environmental disaster one hundred times the size of the Exxon Valdez (yes, you read that right) unfolded on a riverbank in eastern Tennessee. A wave of poisonous sludge buried a town…along with the myth of clean coal.
Late december was rainy and cold in east Tennessee, the temperature ricocheting from freezing to mild, and maybe that had something to do with it. Maybe the rain saturated all that ash, and tiny rivulets bore into the dike and then froze in the cold and expanded and thawed and froze and expanded again. Or maybe the weight of the wet ash, the downward force of it, was more than the lateral force the dike could withstand and overrode the friction that held the walls in place.
The dike was not merely breached. It did not spring a leak. It collapsed, most of the northern and western walls disintegrating into mud and mush just before one o’clock in the morning on December 22. When it fell away, the wet ash behind it—more than a billion gallons of gray slurry, a hundred times more than the oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez—gushed out with the fury of a reservoir bursting through a dam, which, really, was exactly what it was.
“You know how people always say a tornado sounds like a freight train?” says Travis Cantrell, who lived in the trailer above the dock where his uncle Rick sat out all night fishing. “That’s what it sounded like.”
Mohave Generating Station Owners to Dismantle Plant
June 10, 2009
Media Contact: Gil Alexander, (626) 302-2255
ROSEMEAD, Calif., June 10, 2009 – The owners of the Mohave Generating Station in Laughlin, Nev., including Southern California Edison, today announced the decision to decommission the station and remove the generating facility from the site. During the coming months, non-generating equipment and facilities will be dismantled. Then, in 2010, the plant’s generating equipment will be removed and its operating permits terminated. The site’s transmission switchyard and some related facilities will remain in place.
