By Tony Davis
Arizona Daily Star
An expensive upgrade to slash air pollution from a power plant would boost Central Arizona Project water costs nearly 12 percent for Tucson and other major Arizona cities, the CAP says.
A much bigger bite – between 32 and nearly 40 percent – would hit farmers, including farmers on the Tohono O’odham Nation.
The costs would rise because the proposed upgrade of the coal-fired Navajo Generating Station in Northern Arizona near the Utah border would mean higher energy bills for the CAP – Tucson’s main drinking water supply. Navajo furnishes more than 90 percent of the power that pumps Colorado River water uphill to Tucson.
But it will be years before the higher costs kick in – and other complex issues related to the plant make it uncertain whether it will even survive.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has made this proposal as a way of reducing haze blocking views of the Grand Canyon and 10 other Southwestern national parks and wilderness areas. The public gets 90 days to comment, starting next month.
Under this proposal, Navajo’s operator, the Phoenix-based Salt River Project, would have a decade, five more years than originally thought, to install the controls. They resemble automobile catalytic converters. They would cut nitrogen oxide emissions by 84 percent and improve visibility at the national parks by 73 percent, the EPA says.
CAP rate increases would likely kick in by about 2018, when the Salt River Project would start making the needed investments.
