San Juan Generators Provide Clean, Affordable Power

Radical environmentalists, trumping up false claims regarding dangers to public health are doing their best to influence bureaucrats in Washington D.C. to dominate New Mexico. Lately they have continued their push to drive up the cost of electricity through efforts aimed at shutting down the San Juan Generating Station. If successful, the results of their calls for mindless policies are likely to cause skyrocketing electric bills and rolling electricity blackouts in New Mexico during times of peak demand.
According to the Associated Press, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency asked state regulators to clarify some requirements in the operating permit for the coal-fired San Juan Generating Station in northwest New Mexico. The EPA's order, issued late Thursday, is in response to a petition filed in 2010 by radical environmental groups determined to eventually shut down all coal fired power plants in America by dragging utility companies like PNM into court repeatedly to stop or delay the plant re-permitting process. The pattern repeats itself continuously. Power companies have been installing one generation of new pollution control equipment after another for decades, dramatically reducing emissions to a trace while continuing to provide a reliable source of electricity....wind or no wind, come rain or sunshine, at an affordable price. Today emissions at San Juan are virtually undetectable. Still, well funded radical environmental groups force the waste of millions of dollars by dragging PNM back to court. This round of wasteful litigation has been caused by lawyers for the radicals expressing “concern” over whether the state is holding the plant's operator accountable.

San Juan Generating Station

Despite the EPA's decision on Thursday calling for more "clarification" in the permit, New Mexico's own regulator the Environment Department, and the plant's operator, Public Service Company of New Mexico, said they were pleased, "the EPA denied the group's claim that the plant's emission limits would put public health and the environment at risk. The order does not constitute a finding that the plant violated any provisions of the federal Clean Air Act or that any emissions limits were violated."

Clean air above the San Juan River

The 1,800-megawatt San Juan Generating Station is one of the largest coal-fired plants in the Southwest. It is a marvel of efficiency and the key source of reliable and affordable power for PNM customers and more than 2 million other customers throughout the adjacent states.

For its part, PNM has been diligently trimming nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter and other emissions from the plant for decades. The most recent improvement was yet another $320 million environmental upgrade completed just three years ago. Still, despite all of PNM's efforts, it is being pressured by the EPA, at the insistence of radical environmentalists to install still more pollution controls to “curb regional haze” that is invisible to the naked eye. Attempts at compromises with the radicals has been impossible. Both PNM and exasperated New Mexico state regulators have filed appeals. A decision in that case is expected this spring.

San Juan Generators Provide Clean, Affordable Power