Large crowd comes out to protest early coal fired plant closure

By David Sykes

About 200 people, many of them employees, turned out at a public hearing in Boardman Monday night to protest the early closure of the Boardman coal fired plant. The hearing was in front of three members of the Oregon Public Utility Commission (PUC), which is preparing to make a decision on the future of the plant.

Portland General Electric had filed April 2 to close Oregon’s only coal-fired plant early, by 2020, in exchange for installing $470 million less in pollution controls than proposed by state regulators.
Under the company’s proposal to the Department of Environmental Quality, Boardman would close at least 20 years earlier than planned.

The move left then left the PUC with three options.

1. Close the plant by 2020 and have PGE invest $320 million to install new burners in 2011 that reduce nitrogen oxides emissions and scrubbers in 2014 to remove sulfur dioxide.
2. Close the plant at the end of 2018 and invest $100 million in pollution controls. The expensive scrubber would no longer be required due to the earlier closing date, but some sulfur reduction would still be necessary.
3. Close the plant by late 2015 or early 2016, and invest $35 million to install nitrogen oxide and mercury controls.

The testimony Monday ranged from urging the PUC to pick the 2020 option, to finding ways to keep the plant open for the duration of its original life span until 2040. A decision from the PUC is not expected until November 9.

“We need change the direction our state is going,” Morrow County Commissioner Terry Tallman said in urging the commission to choose the 2020 closure plan. He said the plant provides needed tax revenue to state and county coffers to pay for needed services.

Umatilla County Commissioner Larry Givens said the plant closure will affect Umatilla County also as 65 of the 110 full time employees of the facility live there. “The communities around the plant are not wealthy communities and we need the jobs,” he said. He told the commission that losing the 110 full time jobs, as well as the 250 contract and seasonal workers, is equivalent to 14,000 jobs in the metro Portland area. ‘When you make this determination consider the impact on residents and counties,” he urged.

State Senator David Nelson said the decision to close is going to make a difference in school funding. “PGE is making a huge effort to do the right thing,” Nelson said. “There are people in this state who want to be the first to shut down a coal plant,” he said. “We need to develop more of our natural resources to fund public services,” he added.

State Representative Greg Smith of Heppner testified and said the people who run the plant are “honest hard working citizens who want a little common sense (in the process),” he said. “Now is not the time to dig that hole deeper in Oregon,” Smith said on the negative impact the closure will have on Oregon’s struggling economy.

Umatilla Electric Co-Op General Manager Steve Eldrige said the co-op has not taken a position on which option PGE should take on the coal plant, but did offer some information.

The coal plant offers 585 mega watts of firm power and is on line and available 95 percent of the time, he said. He said wind will not replace that type of firm power, and neither will gas in the near future. The plant produces about 15 percent of the power provided by PGE, Oregon’s largest electric utility.

Travis Eri, president of the Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, AFLCIO, that represents 80 of the workers at the plant, told the commission that the economy is in dire straights and we need to let the economy stabilize before taking action that would lose jobs. He said ways can be developed to burn coal with less pollution given the time. Several people did testify that the plant should be used to find new ways of burning coal and also alternative fuels.

“Why can’t we use the plant to test new ways of reducing emissions,” said Port of Morrow General Manager Gary Neal. “Let it become a template to test new technologies,” he suggested, and urged the commission to make the right decision for “rate payers and the Oregon economy.” Neal said the plant pays 20 percent, or about $2.8 million, of the Morrow County property taxes and has a total $50 million impact on the surrounding area economy.

Sheryll Bates, executive director of the Heppner Chamber of Commerce and the Willow Creek Economic Development Group, urged the commission to give the plant more time. “Give us a chance to make it work,” she said. ‘We don’t want to give up all the good things in our lives,” she said.

Quite a few employees of the coal plant also testified at the meeting.

One worker named David Richards, who said he was a graduate of Riverside High School and OSU, urged the commission not to make a decision based on politics. “This plant produces the cheapest energy in the state and the environmentalists want to shut down the only coal plant in the state,” he said.

Don of Hermiston said he spent 20 years in the Navy before coming to work at the coal plant. “I am tired of moving. Don’t take my job,” he implored the commission. He said he is not able to buy a car now because he doesn’t know for how long he will have a job. “You have the power to take my job,” he told commission members.

Another unidentified worker says he was a boiler maker who was an apprentice when the plant was built in 1980 and he worked on the construction. He said since then he has traveled all over and the Boardman Coal fired plant is one of the cleanest plants in the country. He said with 10 percent unemployment in Oregon, why would anyone want to shut down a facility like Boardman. He said the Boardman plant could be the cleanest plant around if it were given a chance.

Curt Eadler, a maintenance manager who lives in Heppner, told the commission he moved from Portland to live in Heppner and raise his daughter and send her to school here, because he “didn’t like the way things were going” in Portland. “Don’t close the plant,” he said.

The plant employs about ____   people from South Morrow County.

Ned Clark of Horseshoe Hereford Ranch out of Heppner said shutting the plant would adversely affect the economy locally and across the state of Oregon and should be allowed to operate until 2040. “They provide low cost reliable power,” Clark said.

An executive of RDO foods in Boardman also testified at the meeting. The man said his company purchase and processes potatoes locally for sale in the Far East, and with the possible closure of the plant there will be uncertainty in the local power market. “Are we going to stifle our own potential?” he asked. He said his company had an opportunity to grow in this area but uncertain power rates could stifle that growth. He asked the commissioners to “put down the axe and step away from the tree”.

 

What the candidates say

The Heppner Gazette-Times contacted both gubernatorial candidates to get their statements on the proposed Boardman coal fired plant closure. Following are their responses.

 

John Kitzhaber
“As Governor, John Kitzhaber will work with the Oregon Public Utility Commission and Oregonians to develop a plan that allows the Boardman plant to be taken offline within the 2020 time frame.
That plan needs to address the following three points:
First, Oregon needs to locate, secure and turn the switch on for the lower carbon resources that we will use to replace the Boardman power.
Second, there is no question that ratepayer and taxpayer dollars will be involved, and we must be sensitive to how those resources are used.
Third, replacing this huge amount of power is likely to disproportionately affect two groups:  1) energy intensive industries that account for many jobs in Oregon; and 2) low-income ratepayers.”

Chris Dudley
“The PGE plan demonstrates a good balance of cost control for rate payers and environmental controls. With new technologies in energy emerging so quickly, 2020 shouldn’t be considered a date set in stone. One thing that is for certain, without investments in alternative sources of power and a strategic plan for transmission, an accelerated closure of the Boardman Power Plant would simply be irresponsible.”