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Cleaning dirty air risks costlier Arizona water

Posted by: Maven on November 1, 2009 at 8:08 am

navajo power plantFrom the Arizona Republic:

“The Navajo Generating Station, the huge coal-fired power plant outside Page, supplies a fraction of Arizona’s electricity demand, but its role in moving water to the state’s largest cities
has thrust it into a growing battle over the cost of cleaning up air pollution.

In the two months since the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed rules that would require costly new air-scrubbing equipment at the plant, the debate has escalated into a war of increasingly dire predictions: Tribal economies could collapse. The plant itself could close. The price of water sold to Phoenix and Tucson
could quadruple.

Environmental groups have targeted Navajo and the nearby Four Corners Power Plant for years because of the emissions-related haze that builds up over the Grand Canyon and other fragile landscapes. The EPA ranks Navajo as the nation’s third-largest emitter of nitrogen oxides, pollutants created when coal is burned. Four Corners is the second-largest.

The new EPA rules, if adopted by the agency, would force owners of the two plants to install complex new air scrubbers that use ammonia to break down the pollutants. Navajo’s owners say the systems cost too much money and could push power rates out of reach for the plant’s users. They also argue that the added scrubbers would produce visibility improvements imperceptible to human eyes. …”

Read more from the Arizona Republic by clicking here.

November 1, 2009 · Filed Under Colorado River & the Southwest

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