The issue--an introduction

We've been hearing for a long time that a company called SouthWest Power is planning to build a 600-megawatt power plant 2 miles from the center of our town of Bowie. Maybe won't be a problem at all, but the idea makes me nervous, and so I thought I'd ask around to see what I can find out, what the impact will be on the community and the environment, and what we can do about it, if it does seem that it might be a problem. It got to be a lot of information--too much to organize by email, so I'm going to put whatever I come up with in this blog. This post is my original email to friends, soliciting help and information, which I sent out a couple of days ago. Since then I have got more information, which I will post next.

Their website is www.bowiepower.com, and I am getting most of my information from that. There are a lot of pictures and charts, etc. It might be slanted, but even what they say in their own favor alarms me enough.

They say they are planning to use a "cleaner" process that produces gases from pulverized coal and then uses that as fuel to create steam. They mention two other power plants that use this process, each of which generates only 250 megawatts (which is less than half the size of the one proposed for Bowie). They say they are cleaner than normal coal-burning plants, so I looked them up on Google. There is a website that talks about these plants. One is in a swamp in Florida (not 2 miles from the center of a town like Bowie). They say that this plant emits 85% fewer nitrogen oxides (which they say create acid rain, ozone, and a toxic gas that can sear lung tissue and create permanent damage) than a typical plant. So if you do the math, it works out that the Bowie plant will emit more than a third of the amount of a normal coal-burning plant.

The same article says that the "clean" Florida plant emits 20 times more nitrogen oxide than a plant that burns natural gas, which is what they were originally planning to use as a fuel in Bowie before they decided to use coal. So according to my math, this would mean that the "clean" Bowie plant will emit 48 times the amount of nitrogen oxide as a natural gas plant. Which is not to say that we want a natural gas plant either.

The same website also says that even with the cleanest technologies, a coal-burning plant poses more of a global warming problem than a plant using natural gas or oil.

They power plant's website says that they are planning to use sub-bituminous coal as fuel. They say there are four kinds of coal, and this is the second-worst kind of coal in terms of CO2, mercury, arsenic and mercury emissions. That doesn't sound good to me. They say the different kinds of coals can have other elements as well, some toxic. They plan to have evaporation ponds to isolate the toxic slag, which they hope to sell for road construction (although they don't have any buyers yet). Plans are in the works to modify the existing aquifer protection permit as required.

The Bowie website says that our plant will produce 3.6 million tons of CO2 per year. For comparison, an average mid-sized car creates 3.55 tons per year, so this plant will produce about as much CO2 as a million cars. This is the main gas that is creating global warming. SouthWest Power's website says that they are thinking of getting someone to build a greenhouse to use some of it, but it's in the maybe stage. They are talking about maybe being able to capture most of it, but don't seem to to have any firm plans to actually do it.

Cochise county is already ranked among the worst 10% of all counties in terms of non-cancer risking air pollution (whatever that is). Most of this comes from our other power plant, Apache Generating Station, which is a 520 megawatt power station southeast of Tucson.

The population of Bowie is more than 25% children aged 19 and under. Compared with Arizona in general (13%), Bowie also has a disproportionate number of people over the age of 65: (18.8%). These two populations are the most susceptible to damage from air pollution. And just for the record, the median household income is $52,232, compared to the Arizona median of $185,400. So these are mostly people who can't afford a lot of options.

There are more scary things in the website, but you get the idea.

The county supervisors met about it in April and haven't decided yet, and they are planning to have another meeting in Bowie or Willcox so people in the community can come. There's a good description of the meeting on this website.