COAL BURNNER power PLANT in GERLACH ????

[ibsquared]

Hey all read it for your self in Saturday New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/20/busin ... oref=login

Any thoughts?

[DVD Burner]

For those who dont feel like going through the registering but are still intersted in what is going on.



Fuel of the Future? Some Say Coal

By SIMON ROMERO

Published: November 20, 2004


ERLACH, Nev. - John and Rachel Bogard are used to living off the grid in this desert hamlet, generating their own electricity with solar panels. They have been doing so for nearly 30 years.
But now the grid is rushing toward them, in the form of an electrical source even more futuristic than solar power. It is coal.
Sure, coal sounds dirty and dated, the kind of energy source that went out of fashion with big Buicks and bell-bottom jeans. But a coal project here in northern Nevada is one of more than 100 coal-fueled plants that are vying for approval around the country - the largest increase in such projects since the 1970's.
The reason for coal's resurgence is an intensifying fear in the United States that supplies will become scarce in electricity's other main fuel source, natural gas. And coal is a lot cheaper.
Altogether, energy companies in the United States have announced plans to build more coal-fired power plants in the last 12 months than they did in the last 12 years. If all those projects get off the ground, utilities would invest more than $100 billion.
The electricity industry's back-to-the-future approach to coal is soon expected to pit dozens of communities around the country against energy companies that are planning coal-based expansion strategies in their midst.
The Bush administration has significantly shifted policy away from three decades of federal efforts to reduce the nation's dependence on coal, which is significantly cleaner than it once was, but still dirtier than natural gas.
Now the administration is supporting the push for a new wave of coal-fueled energy, with the Energy Department investing $2 billion in ventures intended to make coal less polluting.
But until coal-fired plants become even cleaner, clashes over their impact on air quality are expected to multiply. Because of restrictions elsewhere, many coal-fired power plants will be put in places with pristine air quality and relatively relaxed pollution restrictions.
Gerlach's location near Nevada's border with California, an energy-hungry state where environmental standards make it nearly impossible to build coal-fired plants, is one attraction for the builder, Sempra Energy. Gerlach, which has fewer than 200 residents, is at the crossroads of rail lines that can haul coal from Montana strip mines and an electricity transmission line that can send the power southward to Los Angeles and San Diego.
Gerlach has a "combination of ideal factors," said Marty Swartz, a director for project development at Sempra. As for Gerlach itself, he said, the project would generate about $30 million in tax revenue for Washoe County, which encompasses this tiny hamlet as well as Reno, a two-hour drive south.
Prospects of new wealth for the town have done little to calm people's nerves here.
"If it's such a great deal, then let them build the thing in California," Mr. Bogard, 56, the owner of a pottery business, said. "I'm not sure if anyone involved with this realizes what a nightmare it is to have a plant spewing coal fumes go up in their backyard. This would simply destroy our life out here."
The tensions arising from Sempra's plan - known as the Granite Fox Power project - and from similar plans for other coal-fueled plants are an inevitable outcome of energy policies pursued in the 1990's. During that period, nearly every new electricity plant was built to be run on natural gas, which is cleaner-burning and was generally thought at the time to be in ample supply in North America.
But in the last five years, natural gas prices have skyrocketed as imports from Canada slowed and domestic production failed to keep up with demand. Prices have shot up to more than $6 for each thousand cubic feet from just $2 in 1999.
Coal, meanwhile, has remained relatively cheap, and the United States has the world's largest reserves. As a result, while it costs more to build a coal-fired plant than it does to build one to use natural gas, the running cost of a gas plant has soared in comparison with coal. A typical coal-fired power plant spends 2 cents per kilowatt-hour to fuel its operations, compared with 5 cents per kilowatt-hour for a plant fueled by natural gas.

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Never Register again with http://www.bugmenot.com/ just cut and paste . Love it use it

[Apollonaris Zeus]

the SIMON ROMERO article sucks!

it didn't even mention some of the other big concerns, "Water, transportation costs and how these republican states don't want to enforce the use of better anti-pollution devices that are available today. for the promise of jobs and the fear that they will turn away income these republicans are ready to bend over with vasoline in hand.

Montana is a producer state, we want to develop these resources in a right way and export that electricity, not just the coal. But now we have a democratic governor and we can push make the laws that can get those high tech devices in place on those generators.

A II Z

[cowboyangel]

Romera must go to Nantucket Sound

[Discosybil]

High stakes power play: Gerlach at center of a new kind of range war
Aug 22, 2004 by Susan Voyles RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL

Gerlach has long been known for the nearby Black Rock Desert where a world land speed record was set, the Burning Man counter culture festival that unfolds each year around Labor Day and the renown raviolis at Bruno’s bar.
But winds of change are swirling over this desert town of less than 200 people in northern Washoe County. Some fear the changes could destroy the town, while others see the makings of a boomtown.
In recent months, Gerlach has become the focal point of a high-stakes race between two competing power projects. One is a $2 billion coal-fired project proposed by Sempra Energy that could bring jobs and commerce to the sleepy town but threatens to spoil the remote outback’s clean air and suck up its meager water supply.
The other is a $2 billion geothermal and wind power project proposed by longtime farmer Mike Stewart. It would produce almost as much power as the coal-fired plant’s 1,450 megawatts when fully built. But it needs to raise several hundred million dollars to get started.
Both projects have applied with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to connect to a major transmission line near Gerlach, and experts say limited capacity could result in one project being built and not the other.
“It’s a new kind of range war,” said Harry Parsons, a Reno businessman and conservationist who has hunted and fished around Gerlach for 45 years.
At the middle of the race is the Sam Jaksick family of Reno. The Jaksicks, the developers of Montreux, Lakeridge and other high-end housing projects, own 44,000 acres of primitive land in northern Washoe County around Gerlach.
The family plans to sell to a San Diego company the water rights and 2,000 acres it needs to build the coal-fired plant. But it is also hoping to sell another 18,637 acres of hills and mountains nearby to the federal government for wildlife conservation.
U.S. Interior Secretary Gale Norton on Aug. 5 approved setting aside nearly $11 million to purchase the acreage, which includes numerous springs and creeks to sustain the wildlife.
Todd Jaksick, Sam’s son, said the family believes that advanced pollution-control devices will allow wildlife and the coal-fired plant to co-exist.
“People have a picture in mind of the power plants back East and black smoke,” Jaksick said. “We have been told there would be no visible emissions from this plant.
“We just thought it would be a positive. We didn’t want it to be negative.”
Others don’t see it the same way.
Although the coal-fired plant could produce low-cost electricity for Northern Nevada consumers, some say the plant will pollute northern Washoe’s pristine air, creating haze. And the sight of a 650-foot smokestack rising up between the soaring Granite and Buffalo Hill ranges could discourage outdoor enthusiasts from using the otherwise untrampled backcountry.
The issue also has evolved into a broader debate over whether Nevada should embrace renewable energy projects and give stricter reviews to dirtier coal-fired plants. Gov. Kenny Guinn is working on legislation that would toughen and broaden environmental standards regulating coal-fired plants.
“Bluntly, the governor is concerned if we are wisely using our airshed and water,” said Dick Burdette, the governor’s energy advisor.
Members of Guinn’s Renewable Energy Task Force are highly critical of the coal-fired project, which could send most of its power to Southern California.
“California is happy to have our dirty electrons,” said Jane Long, chairwoman of the task force and a university geology professor. “We are sending our air quality to California in having this coal plant.”
“If the coal plant is built up there, it will change the character of that area substantially,” said Tim Hay, the state consumer utility advocate who has a member of his staff serve on the task force.
“Geothermal is certainly much more compatible with the image we want to preserve for rural Nevada — clean air, clean water and wildlife resources available to the public to enjoy.”
Why build in Gerlach?
Opponents of the coal-fired plant say Sempra Energy Resources, the owner of San Diego Gas & Electric and a Fortune 500 company with $8 billion in revenue last year, is turning to Nevada because strict air quality regulations prevent it from building in California.
Sempra is seeking permits to build the Granite Fox plant at the edge of the Smoke Creek Desert, a few miles east of Gerlach. It would be one of the largest coal-fired plants in the country and the first in Washoe County. It also recently opened a coal-fired plant just across the U.S. border in Mexico.
Sempra project manager Marty Swartz said the company has been studying Gerlach for two years. He said the transmission line to Los Angeles, water, availability of land, a railroad line for Wyoming coal trains, clean air and a central location to serve most of the West make the Smoke Creek site a desirable one.
The company also plans to produce another 200 megawatts of power from geothermal and wind.
Although the 1,450-megawatt plant would bring 800 construction jobs to Gerlach, employ about 100-125 permanent workers and pay tens of millions of dollars annually in property taxes, it also would produce tons of pollutants each day that could affect the environment and human health, according to Desert Research Institute scientists.
The plant also would consume 16,000 acre-feet of water annually, and state officials say a 60-year-old study of groundwater in the area — the most recent done — indicates that is the entire annual recharge available.
The plant would produce enough power for 1.4 million homes. Many would be in Southern California, although Sempra wants to sell power to Sierra Pacific Power Co. for its Northern Nevada customers.
Renewable energy project
South of Gerlach, Nevada Renewable Energy Park has plans to harness up to 1,200 megawatts of geothermal and wind power throughout the area. The cost of power is now within the same price range as for power produced by natural gas, officials said — making the project even more appealing.
The $2 billion park would have a transfer station in San Emidio Valley in north Washoe and Pershing counties — where its current geothermal plant is located. Developers hope to build facilities in neighboring valleys and mountain tops. They eliminated plans for a coal-fired plant last fall.
Officials for the Nevada Renewable Energy Park are attempting to line up major financial backers for their project. To do so, officials said, they have to strike contracts to sell the energy and are eyeing the Los Angeles market.
Los Angeles Councilman Tony Cardenas said he supports the proposed park and wants his city to consider investing in it. The state of California, in an effort to diversify the state’s energy sources, is conducting a $2 million study of the wind and geothermal potential of northwestern Nevada.
Before the first wind turbine goes up or the first geothermal power is sold, however, the park must raise more than $130 million to build a converter station to get on the Los Angeles transmission line.
What’s next
Both companies have filed applications with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to connect with the line near Gerlach. A decision is not expected for at least 18 months. Los Angeles water officials said a major factor is whether the companies can line up contracts to sell the power to utilities in Southern California.
Both projects would take years before construction would begin. Any public hearings are more than a year away as yearlong air and water studies are just beginning.
Sempra project manager Marty Swartz expects construction for the first 725-megawatt turbine to begin in the first half of 2006. It would come on line in about four years and the second turbine would be on line a year later.
Washoe County in April approved a permit for a required air-monitoring station for an air quality study and that equipment was installed in July. Sempra has hired the U.S. Geological Survey to determine the sustainable water level in the basin and test wells are being drilled.
The Nevada Division of Environmental Quality would have to approve an air quality permit. The state water engineer must approve any change in use of water rights obtained by the company. It now gathering options to buy those rights.
Sempra filed an informational application in May with the Public Utility Commission and would later need to file another application for permission to build transmission lines.
Sempra also has filed an application with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to build an eight-mile long railroad line to bring supplies of coal across the Smoke Creek Desert. That triggers an environmental study.
A special-use permit also would be required from the county commission.

[Discosybil]

Water question looms large over plans for power
Aug 22, 2004 by Susan Voyles RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL

A question surrounding a proposed 1,450-megawatt, coal-fired power plant on the Smoke Creek Desert is whether there is enough water to operate the facility.
Sempra Energy is seeking 16,000 acre-feet of water rights, and according to the last water study done 60 years ago, that’s the total ground-water recharge available each year in the desert basin.
But the Nevada State Engineering Office says it’s not sure how much water might be available in the area. There are water rights for ground water, water rights for the creeks and vested claims for water held by ranchers before water law existed, said Jason King, Nevada deputy water engineer. But no one knows how much the creeks contain.
“It gets tricky,” King said. “We have not quantified the surface water.”
Sempra has hired the U.S. Geological Survey to study the available water, including three creeks that drain into the basin. After the study, the state engineer will decide whether water could be diverted to cooling a power plant.
Rock Spring Ranches and the Bright-Holland Co., both controlled by the Sam Jaksick family of Reno, own 12,500 acre-feet of water in the basin. All but 1,000 acre-feet of that is used to irrigate ranches. An acre-foot is the amount used in a year by a family of four.
The Jaksick family would sell the water rights and 2,000 acres at the north end of the desert for the power plant project, said Todd Jaksick.
Sempra Energy project manager Marty Swartz said the company also has lined up options for water rights from half of the other 12 ranches or homes in the valley. Sempra also would buy land to drill water wells near Squaw, Smoke and Buffalo creeks that drain into the playa.
Swartz said there are no plans to empty Squaw Creek Reservoir, a popular fishing and camping spot on private land.
If there’s not enough water, Swartz said the company faces three options: build a smaller plant, use more expensive dry-cooling equipment to cool the turbines or abandon the project.
The state engineer has final authority over how much of the water Sempra could use. If the state engineer allows the water to be diverted from irrigation to industrial use, the pastures could become desert.
The Jaksicks also hold claims for water for ranching operations that could be sold to Sempra. These claims — recognized and filed before water rights law existed — are numerous and haven’t been tallied by the engineer’s office.
Next in line is High Rock Holdings Inc., which has applied for 18,000 acre-feet for a 2,000-megawatt coal-fired plant in the Nevada Renewable Energy Park in the northern valleys, hills and mountains of the county. But the company has dropped plans for a coal-fired plant and is focusing on wind and geothermal power.
Shuman Moore, development manager for the park, said Mike Stewart, the principal involved in the energy park, still wants the water. Stewart would export it to Orient Farms, where he grows garlic and onions northeast of Gerlach.
Gerlach residents get water from a spring in a cavern in the Granite mountains before it hits the desert floor. The town would not be affected by the power plant’s need for water, said Joe Colt of the town’s water board.

[Discosybil]

Gerlach at an environmental crossroads
Aug 23, 2004 by Susan Voyles RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL

WALL CANYON -- Retired Reno archaeologist Alvin McLane jumps from one obsidian flake to another, spread across the ground like glittering broken glass.
Within a few minutes, he finds a knife, pieces of chert and a milling stone.
There’s no telling how long these artifacts have been sitting on the bank of the Wall Canyon Creek, 120 miles north of Reno.
Penni Van Ornum, an archaeologist with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management office in Cedarville, Calif., says the obsidian and chert flakes indicate Paiutes once lived here. To find out when, a hearth would have to be found and carbon-dated.
Van Ornum says the site could be added to the National Register of Historic Places. “It has the potential to yield information about things we don’t know,” she says.
But McLane and Van Ornum are not on public lands. They are walking along the creek on land owned by the Sam Jaksick family of Reno in the heart of a wilderness study area.
Washoe County, the Nevada Land Conservancy and other groups convinced federal officials to buy the lands. Using sales of public lands in Southern Nevada, U.S. Secretary Gale Norton has set aside nearly $11 million to buy 18,637 acres owned by the Jaksicks in northern Washoe County. Funds became available when 2,532 acres near Henderson sold for $707.2 million -- twice as much as expected.
The government will hire an appraiser to determine the market value of the land before a final price is determined.
The Jaksick family developed the Lakeridge, Montreux and Saddlehorn neighborhoods in the southwest Truckee Meadows and is at the center of what some Washoe County residents say is an environmental crossroads for the sprawling basin-and-range land in the north.
The family bought 44,000 acres of rugged, undeveloped country from the John Casey estate in 1999, and though it is willing to sell 18,600 acres to the government for wildlife, it’s also planning to sell 2,000 acres to a Southern California energy firm that wants to build a 1,450 megawatt coal-fired power station at the northern end of the Smoke Creek Desert. (See related stories on RGJ.com).
While some say a coal-fired plant doesn’t fit next to wild lands with historic significance, few dispute this conclusion: The Jaksicks’ land in Wall Canyon, the Buffalo Hills and the Granite Range are worth keeping in their natural state.
“To see it, to feel it, to touch it, that’s where the passion comes,” said Harry Parsons, chairman of the Nevada Land Conservancy one of the groups that pushed for the federal acquisition.
Unique geography
The Jaksick properties include watering holes, streams and ponds for a diverse range of wildlife in the area.
The Nevada Department of Wildlife counts at least 1,250 mule deer, 3,700 antelope and 300 California bighorn sheep north of Pyramid Lake, and many of these creatures depend on this water. The area is prime sage grouse territory and home to hundreds of wild horses.
You could call these rugged lands Washoe’s outback. People can travel for miles and miles through unfenced lands without any traces of dumping or littering. If not purchased by the federal government, these lands could be sold for cabins on 40-acre lots. Conservationists fear the wildlife eventually would be driven off.
Other than Squaw Creek Reservoir, there are no large camping areas. And north of the reservoir, you can drive all day and see only one house.
Wall Canyon, the Buffalo Hills and the Granite Range have a unique natural history, says Ken Collum, a BLM geologist. Here, the Sierra foothills, the Cascades, the Modoc Plateau and Great Basin come together.
Lava flows from 13 million years ago cap the rounded hills, ridges and high plateaus. Beneath those peaks and ridges, water has eaten away at softer volcanic ash left from other volcanoes, creating canyons and gorges as far as the eye can see.
Only one paved road goes through the 1.2 million acres of northern Washoe the BLM oversees, not including the Granites, Collum says.
Pioneers took the best lands when they homesteaded a hundred years ago. You can still find their abandoned cabins, stone walls and ranches near streams or springs.
Unique critters such as small sucker fish and pygmy rabbits live in Wall Canyon. At a pool in one creek, dozens of the Wall Canyon suckers, including two grand daddies six inches long, dart among the rocks.
Two years ago, fish and wildlife workers took 11,000 brown trout from Wall Creek to stock the Squaw Creek Reservoir, Todd Jaksick says while on a tour of the property with Parsons, land conservancy director Alicia Reban, BLM officials and others.
BLM scientists have yet to determine what type of fish live in the West Fork Buffalo Creek at Hole in the Ground, a valley named for a peculiar rounded shape that resembles a caldera.
BLM would repair damage
At the bottom of the canyon, the group stops to observe four antelope at the opposite end of the Hole in the Ground. They watch their steps after a baby rattler slithers under a rock.
Tara DeValois, a BLM range specialist, points to an impressive rock wall pioneers built in the 1880s to block off the mouth of the canyon, creating a corral for their livestock.
DeValois finds a treasure-trove of plant species along the brook, including peonies, wild onions, Great Basin wild rye and loco weed.
McLane, the state’s leading expert on petroglyphs, scans the canyon for Indian art rock paintings. But he finds only a few obsidian flakes.
The BLM has identified the Buffalo Hills and Wall Canyon as wilderness study areas, meaning they cannot be mined and people are required to stay on established roads.
If the BLM takes ownership of the Jaksick lands, DeValois says the government would repair the creek damage caused when pioneers put too many cattle on the land and overgrazing created steep, eroding stream banks.
Over time, she says, the creek would be reworked so the banks flood again, creating meadows to replace the sagebrush. Similar work on BLM sections of the creek already have been done.
Near Hole in the Wall, wild horses have trampled a meadow, creating one big mud hole. DeValois says sensitive meadows such as this one would be fenced off and protected under BLM ownership.
About a third of the Jaksick land to be purchased are in the Granites. The 88 million-year-old mountains soar 4,000 feet above Gerlach and are 9,000 feet above sea level.
Near the highest peaks, the hills stay green all year, Jaksick says. He says he’s explored “every inch” of these parts over the years.
“In deer season, people are camped all over the place,” he says. But usually he can spend days on the mountain without seeing anyone.
More and more, he says the deer herds are being kept in check by mountain lions. The lions are no longer hunted in California and Oregon and, as their numbers multiply, they come to Nevada in search of new territories.
Tony Diebold, a wildlife guide who has trapped and hunted in the mountains over 25 years, has seen bobcat, weasels and many other species.
If the Jaksick lands are purchased, Diebold says he is afraid the government would make the hills official wilderness areas and start closing off roads.
“It’s pretty hard to get around. It’s taken 80 years to build the few roads we have,” he says. “It’s pretty rugged country.”

[Discosybil]

I thought I would add a little more reading!

[DVD Burner]

Thanks sybil.