Representatives of Arkansas utilities plan to attend a public hearing at the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality headquarters Thursday over a proposed federal plan to reduce emissions in Arkansas and Missouri. The plan would cost the utilities more than $1 billion.
The hearing is at the Department of Environmental Quality's headquarters, 5301 Northshore Drive in North Little Rock.
The Environmental Protection Agency's Regional Haze Rule plan implements rules approved in 1999 at the federal level for all states to increase visibility in national parks and wildlife areas. The rule requires retrofitting nine units at six power plants in Arkansas with emission-controlling scrubbers.
Supporters of the plan hope that it will lead to the closure of coal plants in Arkansas that they believe are detrimental to air quality and lead to respiratory illness and premature death, while utilities note the high cost of the plan that could be passed down to customers.
Coal-using utilities operating in Arkansas are facing high-cost regulations on multiple fronts: the regional haze plan and the nationally proposed ozone and carbon dioxide standards.
The scrubbers required by the haze plan would be separate from measures that would reduce carbon dioxide emissions to levels proposed by the EPA for the entire country. The federal Clean Power Plan's restrictions on carbon emissions would prompt coal plants to reduce production or capture carbon as it's released, among other things. The haze plan would require a scrubber each for sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide.
"There's no secret this administration and the EPA wants to close as many coal plants as possible," said Curtis Warner, director of compliance and support for the Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corp.
After years of discussion, much of the regional haze plan isn't new to utilities, but one of the unexpected elements is the inclusion of the 1,700-megawatt Independence coal plant in Newark, which would be required to install two scrubbers at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Officials with the Arkansas Electric Cooperation Corp. said the company intends to install two emissions-reducing scrubbers at the cost of $400 million each on the 1,700-megawatt White Bluff coal plant in Redfield and switch to low-sulfur fuel oil at plants in Augusta and Camden.
The cooperative owns 35 percent of each of the state's two largest coal plants: the White Bluff plant and the Independence plant. Cooperative officials maintain that the Independence plant should not be included in the plan because the date of its construction -- Unit 1 in 1983 and Unit 2 in 1984 -- should place it in a later phase of planning.
Entergy, which owns the remaining 65 percent of each plant, remains mum on how it would comply with the plan. After being asked how the utility would comply and if the utility was planning to close portions or all of each plant, Entergy spokesman Sally Graham said only that utility officials do not believe the Independence plant should be included in the plan.
Together, the Independence and White Bluff plants make up a hefty amount of the electricity produced within the state. The plants comprise just more than 50 percent of the electricity produced by the generating stations the cooperative owns at least a portion of.
Warner said closing the plants would be "drastic," given that the mega-wattage of electricity produced would have to be replaced with something else.
"When the final rule comes out we'll comply with it, of course," he said.
Glen Hooks, executive director of the Arkansas Sierra Club, has expressed his environmental group's support of the plan since its announcement about a month ago.
"We are supporting the draft regional haze plan, because it will help reduce haze pollution in our national parks and wildlife areas and it might also lead to the promotion of cleaner energy resources in our state," he said Friday.
Hooks said the plan is not about the health effects of coal plant emissions, although the plan could have effects by potentially forcing utilities to shut down portions of their power plant production.
The national Sierra Club has supported closing coal plants across the United States and increasing investment in renewable energy sources. The group received $30 million to back its efforts from Bloomberg Philanthropies -- founded by former New York mayor and billionaire businessman Michael Bloomberg -- in addition to $50 million previously received by the foundation.
Arkansas does not currently produce renewable energy, although a Texas wind energy company has recently shown interest in establishing an 80-megawatt windfarm in Elm Springs in northwest Arkansas.
Redfield Mayor Harmon Carter said he thinks a scrubber for fine particulates -- which would be different from scrubbers for sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide -- should have been placed on the White Bluff plant years ago.
He said coal dust from the plant has caused allergies, asthma and sinus issues to flare up.
Carter and Independence County officials said closing down portions or all of the White Bluff and Independence plants would greatly impact schools, which receive portions of taxes that's greatly boosted by the plants' operation.
"I am not opposed to [the] EPA," Newark Mayor Jim Cunningham said. "I am concerned though that [the] EPA doesn't understand what's really at stake."
Robert T. Griffin, county judge of Independence County, said he did not believe the Independence plant would be at risk but that closing down part of the plant and supplementing it with renewable energy sources might not be a bad thing.
"So if there is a supplemental resource use, then that would actually add jobs to provide that," he said.
Public comment on the plan ends May 16. The Thursday public hearing will be from 9 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. The event will consist of two information sessions form 9 to 9:45 a.m. and from 1 to 1:45 p.m. The public hearings will be held from 10 to 11:30 a.m. and from 2 to 7:30 p.m.
An industry and Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality plan for implementing federal haze rules looked similar to the EPA plan but was partially rejected by the EPA in 2012, eventually prompting the EPA to issue its own plan earlier this month. The state never submitted a new plan.
The plan targets visibility in Caney Creek Wilderness Area, the Upper Buffalo Wilderness Area and two parks in Missouri -- the Hercules-Glades Wilderness Area and the Mingo National Wildlife Refuge.
Haze is measured in deciviews. When Caney Creek and the Upper Buffalo were last measured for haze, they came in at 26.36 deciviews and 26.27 deciviews, respectively.
Although the requirements are currently being met, the EPA goal is to reduce haze to 11.58 deciviews for Caney Creek and 11.57 deciviews for the Upper Buffalo by 2064 by reducing sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide levels.
Metro on 04/13/2015