Plug
pulled on power plant
Efforts to restart Mohave
Generating Station halted, report says
Suzanne Adams, Kingman Miner
May 31, 2007
LAUGHLIN - The end of days may be coming
soon for the Mohave Generating Station.
Major shareholder Southern California
Edison has decided to discontinue efforts to restart
or sell the plant, according to a monthly status report
sent to the California Public Utilities Commission dated
May 22.
Estimates put the cost of restarting
the plant around $1 billion. That cost would have included
restarting the Black Mesa coal mine, repairs to a coal
slurry line that fed the plant and pollution controls
for the plant.
"Despite an intensive effort over
several months, SCE has not been able to secure a firm
offer to purchase on terms and conditions that would
be acceptable to SCE," the report states.
According to the report, SCE began looking
for new owners in February after the Salt River Project,
a co-owner of the plant, ended its efforts to create
a new ownership group.
The SCE states in the report that it
is unaware "of any plans or interest on the part
of the other Mohave co-owners to further pursue any
efforts toward a Mohave restart, and accordingly, SCE
and the other co-owners are now turning their full focus
to the future reuse or other disposition of the plant
site."
The other co-owners of the plant include
Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the Nevada
Power Company and Salt River Project Agricultural Improvement
and Power District.
SCE and the other co-owners plan to
halt all efforts to maintain the plant for a possible
restart of operations. This includes an end to funding
an environmental impact study aimed at reopening the
Black Mesa coal mines that fed the plant through a 273-mile
coal slurry line; ceasing efforts to renew the plant's
air permits and construction permits for pollution controls;
and reducing staff levels at the plant "substantially
from the current level of 65 employees."
Water allotment
The report did not state what SCE plans
to do with the four square miles of land that the plant
sits on, the $50 million worth of air pollution credits
for the plant or the 16,000 acre-feet of Colorado River
Water allotted to the plant for the next 20 years.
A news release from SCE states that
the owners of the plant are "discussing various
options for the plant site and property."
SCE states in the report that Peabody
Western Coal Company, operator of the Black Mesa and
Kayenta coal mines, may continue to fund the EIS. The
final draft of the EIS is due this summer.
SCE shut the plant down in December
2005 after 36 years in order to comply with a consent
agreement. The agreement was the conclusion of a 1998
Clean Air Act lawsuit brought against SCE and the other
owners of the plant by several environmental groups.
Bid to reopen
In January 2006, SCE, Peabody Western
Coal Company and Black Mesa Pipeline, Inc. asked the
U.S. Department of the Interior's Office of Surface
Mining Reclamation and Enforcement to prepare an EIS
on the possibility of reopening the Black Mesa coal
mine, the coal slurry line that feeds the plant and
an alternative source of water for the slurry line.
According to the draft EIS, 27 miles
of currently abandoned slurry line runs through Kingman,
much of it under Gordon Drive. If the plant had been
restarted, the slurry line would have been rerouted
around Kingman. In June 2006, SCE announced it would
not restart the plant.
According to a draft EIS released in
December, while the plant was in operation it produced
around 1,500 megawatts of power.
When it closed, approximately 305 employees
lost their jobs. The majority of the workers lived in
Kingman.
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