In response to appeals by the Center for Biological Diversity and other groups, the Environmental Appeals Board has ordered an air permit for the Desert Rock coal-fired power plant to be sent back to EPA for more consideration.
The permit, which was issued by the EPA during the Bush Administration, was required for the plant to be constructed, and its return to EPA by the agency’s appellate board for more analysis of the plant’s environmental effects puts the plant’s future in doubt.
The Desert Rock facility was to be a new 1,500MW coal-fired electric generating facility located approximately 25 miles southwest of Farmington, New Mexico. The EPA’s July 2008 issuing of a ‘prevention of significant deterioration’ air permit to the Desert Rock Energy was necessary for the power plant to be constructed.
One of the issues that led EPA’s board to send back the permit was the agency’s failure to consider the effects of the plant to threatened and endangered species under the Endangered Species Act before issuing the permit. As the Center’s appeal demonstrated, the coal plant would have emitted mercury and other contaminates into the San Juan River basin, where the river and two endangered fish species are already afflicted with heavy-metal contamination resulting from operation of three nearby coal-fired power plants.
Amy Atwood, senior attorney and public lands energy director at the center, said: “We are thrilled about the board’s decision to send back to EPA the air permit for Desert Rock, which would have contributed even more air pollution to areas that are already driving fish species toward extinction in the San Juan River basin. The Desert Rock project is fraught with environmental problems and has just been handed a major setback.”
Desert Rock would be built near three existing coal-fired power plants: the San Juan Generating Station, an 1,800MW facility located 15 miles west of Farmington; the Four Corners Power Plant, a 2,040MW plant about 25 miles west of Farmington; and the Navajo Generating Station, a 2,250MW station located on the Navajo Nation near Page, Arizona.
The Center for Biological Diversity is dedicated to ensuring that atmospheric CO2 pollutant levels are reduced to below 350 parts per million (ppm), which leading climate scientists warn is necessary to prevent devastating climate change.