New movement from the power plant people

After all this time, there have been some stirrings from the Southwestern Power Group, the ones who hope to build a power plant in Bowie. I got the following in email from Mike Jackson, who likes to keep tabs on the county supervisors and let people know what they're up to.


For the November 10 BOS meeting: a hearing (Action Item or Public Hearing not specified) on the request by "Southwestern Power Group II, LLC [Phoenix] ... for a 5 year time extension to make substantial construction progress for the Bowie Power Station, a natural gas-fired power generation plant (approved in 2002) located approximately 2 miles north of the unincorporated community of Bowie ...."

In September 2002, the BOA approved rezoning 260 acres to establish the Bowie Power Station. "The rezoning was conditioned upon making substantial construction progress within 5 years," that is by 2007.

In September 2007, the BOS extended the deadline three years, to December 31, 2010.

Now the BOS is asked to extend the deadline a total of eight years, to December 31, 2015. The Docket number is Z-02-13A.

Along with a comment from Hedley Bond:
"Given that essentially nothing has happened on this project in 7 years, an additional 5 years seems like a major request. There was some minimal site work last year to comply with an ADEQ deadline for the start of construction but the site has been dormant since then. They're probably having problems lining up financing in today's economy but, given that the price of natural gas has dropped in recent months, I'm hoping that the BOS will settle for a more reasonable 2 or 3 year extension. A five year extension would mean a plant designed in 2002 could be built 10 or more years later without substantial improvements in design or efficiency and that seems like a lot to ask. I'm pretty busy in Tucson at the moment and don't expect to inject myself into this debate, but I'm hoping someone takes it up, particularly as this extension proposal will probably get some support from Bowie residents."


Question from Diane Drobka:
"Do "we" have a spokesperson that represents us at the BoS meetings? Are you tracking meeting notices so that we know when they will discuss such things and can be certain to attend? What is our best course of action? Should we each write letters to the BoS stating our concerns about a plant being built using old technology, or would that imply that we are supportive of the plant if they upgrade it? I prefer no power plant as the best option but, if one is approved, it should at least be current technology."

Response from Mike Jackson:
"1, about having a spokesperson. I don't recall any one person getting out in front on this at BOS meetings. Of course, it's been a long time since it came up at a meeting. I don't recall how much organization there was at the September 2007 meeting. At least with this item not coming up till November 10, people have a couple of weeks to organize.

2, about tracking meeting notices. Yes, I track them, but it's all public information at sites like
http://www.co.cochise.az.us/ccwebsite/Calendar.asp
and
http://www.co.cochise.az.us/ccwebsite/PublicNotice.asp
but you have to watch both of those because info on one won't necessarily make it onto the other. However, those don't come out until late the week before a meeting, so they don't give you much lead time. For more lead time, you can check the notices at
http://www.co.cochise.az.us/ccwebsite/LegalNotices.asp
but remember that a lot of things that will happen at meetings don't get published in those notices.

And there's always the problem that "packets" the Planning Department has had ready for a month may still never be made available on the net at all, and even if you go to a meeting you may have to ask specially for a "packet."

Things are still set up way too much against the free flow of information. That's one thing CCIPRA has been working on, & there can never be too many citizens fighting that particular fight.

3, about best course of action. Whatever your opinion is on a particular issue, get out the word! Contacting your supervisor, then the other two, is always the best way to start, IMHO. Reader comments on news articles are good, too. Letters to the editor. Just plain coordinating with the community, getting attention and squawking so that public officials can't ignore you. At some point, you have to allocate your energies between fighting a particular abuse by gov, & fighting the gov structure that allows abuse after abuse.

I hope this doesn't sound too much like platitudes. Maybe Hedley has more specific local info. MJ"


Suggestion from Kim Vacaru, Western Director of the Wildlands Network (www.wildlandsnetwork.org):
"We could write a short letter to the BOS, get as many local residents to sign on as we can via email, and send it to BOS.
I'll write it up and circulate if that seems reasonable. Kim"


I'll post updates as they come in.