the film forum library tutorial contact

New Power Plants Threaten NW Environment Opinion by John Paul Williams In My Opinion, The Oregonian, November 27, 2000

Virtually unnoticed, natural gas-fired turbines to generate electricity
are cropping up along the Columbia River

The Sunday Oregonian devoted several pages on Nov. 19 to the potential energy crisis in the Pacific Northwest.

But those articles failed to discuss one pending development: Several power plant developers are turning the Columbia River corridor into what I believe is an "Energy Sacrifice Zone."

From Longview, Wash., through Hermiston, Ore., to east of the Tri-Cities, more than a dozen fossil-fuel power plants have recently started up, are under construction or are in the permit-seeking stage. If these plants go online, within two years more than a dozen 200-foot-high smokestacks will be visible in a 200-mile drive along the river.

These new power plants will alter the face of the Northwest for decades. But this construction has avoided public scrutiny.

These new power plants burn massive amounts of natural gas in turbines, which are similar to jet engines. However, these power plants are inefficient. Even the natural gas sales industry has qualms about these developments.

According to Robert L. Ridgley, the former president of Northwest Natural, conservation of natural gas should be a regional priority, and its best use is to heat homes and water, not to generate electricity.

"While it may appear that it is in our own self interest to sell more natural gas . . . to generate electricity, an energy plan based on combustion turbine generators is not the highest and best use of our natural gas resource," Ridgley testified before the Oregon Energy Policy Review Committee.

"I would hate to have to explain in 30 years why we wasted enormous amounts of natural gas to generate electricity for heating when it could have been used to heat homes and hot water directly at twice the efficiency," Ridgley said.

Besides being inefficient, these power plants will degrade the environment. The convergence of natural gas pipelines and electrical transmission lines along the Columbia River attracts these power plants. But this concentration of power plants threatens our unique Columbia Gorge air shed. Each plant will spew out million of tons annually of toxic air pollution. According to the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Park Service, these impacts have never been studied. Air pollution already degrades visibility in the gorge and is harming plant life and water quality. The acid exhaust from these power plants will make this troubling situation worse.

Each power plant will also consume, and discharge, millions of gallons of water, taxing water supplies that are already demanded by many sources, from farms to salmon habitat. These plants also will be large generators of earth-warming greenhouse gases.

Although the Northwest has several agencies with thousands of employees whose duties include energy policy, no one is organizing a comprehensive review of these pending power plants.

Who will conduct a full-fledged review of all of these power plants?

"Not I," says the Environmental Protection Agency, which has oversight of regional air quality. "Not I," says the Bonneville Power Administration, will will build the power lines and distribute these plants' energy. "Not I." says the Northwest Power Planning Council, which is supposed to provide direction for the BPA.

Instead, the short-staffed Energy Siting Councils of Oregon and Washington, and the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality and the Washington Department of Ecology, each review some of these plants.

But each agency is limited to its own state and cannot review the regional impacts.

In one case, involving a 450-megawatt plant at Hermiston, the DEQ failed to allow the Forest Service to review an air permit. Although the Forest Service has complained, ground was broken recently for the Hermiston Power Partners plant.

At least three of these plants are ducking below Washington state's regulatory radar, meaning that regional energy policy could be determined by whoever shows up for City Council meetings in tiny towns.

It's time for the BPA and the EPA and other state and regional agencies to begin conducting a comprehensive study of these pending facilities and to provide all of the Pacific Northwest's citizens a forum and an opportunity to voice their concerns.