By Ben Giles
Arizona Capitol Times
Patrick Ledger sees two ways his company can respond to a federal order to reduce pollution at its power plant east of Tucson — install multi-million dollar retrofits and hike electricity rates or ignore the order, shut down the plant and lay off workers.
Ledger, CEO of the Arizona Electric Power Cooperative, was one of many speakers at a state legislative hearing Feb. 11 who oppose the order to install pollution reduction measures at three coal-burning power plants in Arizona.
The edict by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency would affect the Apache, Cholla and Coronado plants and could collectively cost Arizona utility companies as much as $1 billion.
The hearing before the House Energy, Environment and National Resources Committee and the Senate Government and Environment Committee made one thing clear — Arizona intends to defend its own regional haze reduction plan, which the EPA partially rejected, and avoid what speakers testified would be the disastrous economic impact of the EPA’s plan.
Some environmentalists were excluded from what Capitol staffers called an informational hearing. They later spoke out in favor of the EPA plan, reminding lawmakers of health concerns posed by regional haze and the brown cloud of dust, dirt and pollutants sullying views at Arizona’s national parks, including the hallmark Grand Canyon.
Utility companies should fix the plants, not shut them down and cost hundreds of workers valuable jobs in rural parts of the state, said Maggie Sacher, executive director of Friends of the Cliffs, a land conservation group working to preserve the Vermillion Cliffs National Monument.
That may require a compromise between the state and federal government to find a more cost-friendly alternative to the retrofits proposed by the EPA.
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