By Bill McMillen | Mohave Valley Daily News
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has agreed to take another look at regional haze controls for a southeastern Arizona power plant and a proposal by the Arizona Electric Power Cooperative that could result in better air quality at a lower cost.
“(The EPA) in simple terms announced last week that it will review its regional haze plan for Apache Generating Station,” said Geoff Oldfather, communications, marketing and public relations manager for Arizona’s G&T Cooperatives/Arizona Electric Power Cooperative. AEPCO owns the Apache Generating Station in Cochise, a coal-fired power plant that supplies about 80 percent of Mohave Electric Cooperative’s electricity.
That could — and Oldfather stressed the word “could” — prove to be the difference from AEPCO spending $30 million for environmental improvements or being forced to spend $192 million to meet EPA requirements on nitrogen oxide, sulfur oxide and other pollutants.
“This was critical for us,” Oldfather said of getting the EPA to agree to review AEPCO’s proposal. “All of our member co-ops, including Mohave, would have been impacted.”
That impact likely would have been higher costs to the cooperative and, in turn, to its local member customers.
