A Nevada Tribe’s Epic Battle To Replace A Deadly Coal Plant With Solar

[kristopher]

A Nevada Tribe’s Epic Battle To Replace A Deadly Coal Plant With Solar
BY JOANNA M. FOSTER ON AUGUST 23, 2013 AT 9:45 AM

MOAPA VALLEY, Nevada — Lots of people have dusty fans. Sometimes they seem to serve no other purpose but to make you feel guilty about your house-cleaning skills. But something is different in the homes in this valley just 50 miles northeast of Las Vegas. If you run your finger along the blades of any ceiling fan in this small town, your finger won’t just be dusty, it will be filthy — caked with black grime.

To understand the black layer that infiltrates even the most fastidiously swept and dusted home, here on the Moapa Paiute Reservation, all you have to do is walk to the beautifully maintained baseball field in the center of town.

From there, you have a direct view across the modest family homes — with well-used cars parked at odd angles, their windshields practically opaque with ashen dust — to the four smokestacks of the Reid-Gardner coal-fired power plant, which first started dumping ash laced with mercury, lead and arsenic in 1965. The plant, recently acquired by MidAmerican Energy when that company bought NV Energy, sits just a few hundred yards away from some of the homes on the reservation. Not many people here have air conditioning, but when demand in Las Vegas spikes, the plant starts belching dark clouds to keep the strip cool.

“I’m scared of it,” said Vickie Simmons, a leader of the Moapa Band of Paiutes Health and Environment Committees. “I don’t like to even look at it.”

Simmons does prefer to keep her blinds down and her curtains drawn...

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/08/23/2515961/replacing-coal-solar-tribal-land/

[phantom power]

1. If they're selling the energy to LA, does that mean their coal plant remains?

[kristopher]

2. I don't understand that question.

Would you mind rephrasing it?

[phantom power]

3. The headline implies that they want to shut down their coal plant

and they want to do it by displacing it with solar. When that solar comes on line, will they be able to shut down the coal plant?

tangentially, my certainty that CO2 is Going To Kill Us All notwithstanding, it seems like properly scrubbing the soot and other non-CO2 pollutants from that plant would fix what's immediately killing those people.

[kristopher]

5. I think the solar is one front in an ongoing battle.

The article states they are trying to get the plant to clean up its act but that's very difficult because those old plants are grandfathered as far as most environmental regulation goes.

Local jobs are certainly a consideration when it comes to local support for one position of another.

LA as a market for the coal plant has a limited life span because of their new law to phase out coal.

Depending on the specific market conditions that exist there, the solar might shave the margin off of the coal plant's sales and push them towards the red.

In summary the solar can make the coal plant less profitable, and reduce local support for keeping it running by making alternative jobs available. Somewhere within state/county/local or tribal government probably lies the ability to shut the plant down if they can get sufficient political support, and with the eventual shutdown written into the LA law, they might feel that the solar project will tip the balance of factors in favor of shutting the coal plant down.

A larger issue is also highlighted in the article - the way we push polluting facilities onto poor communities.


ETA - Just read Nicks post and realized I'd misread the role of LA by confusing this power plant with the one in Arizona, so disregard what I wrote.

[phantom power]

6. poor people get the short end of almost every stick

poor non-white people, doubly so

[NickB79]

4. I'll give it a go

It appears the coal-fired plant in question that has been killing the local people supplies power for Nevada, specifically Las Vegas:

Not many people here have air conditioning, but when demand in Las Vegas spikes, the plant starts belching dark clouds to keep the strip cool.

However, the solar panels being installed are intended to supply power to a DIFFERENT city, namely LA:

The tribe has signed a contract to sell the electricity — enough to power 100,000 homes — to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

“Who would have thought the Moapa Band of Paiutes would be supplying power to LA?” said Eric Lee, acting chairman from the tribe.

So, if they're selling their newly installed solar to LA, what's replacing the coal plant supplying power to Las Vegas? Is there another, unnamed solar project in the works for Vegas as well?

The article says that there are plans to close the coal-fired plant by 2017, but then offers this at the very end:

The battle is far from over, though. Even as the suits to make NV Energy clean up the plant begin, Simmons and her neighbors worry that MidAmerican Power will bring natural gas development into the area.