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Mohave's Closure Could Be Imminent

By Marc Lifsher
Times Staff Writer 12.12.05

Time is running out for talks aimed at keeping open a coal-fired power
plant that supplies more than 7% of the electricity consumed by
Southern California Edison Co. customers.

The Mohave Generating Station in Laughlin, Nev., is scheduled to close
on New Year's Eve and should remain mothballed for at least four years,
Edison said in a recent report to the California Public Utilities
Commission.

Edison owns 56% of the 34-year-old facility on the Colorado River,
which provides enough inexpensive power to run 1.2 million homes.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and utilities in Arizona
and Nevada hold minority interests.

The plant, considered one of the most polluting in the West, faces an
end-of-year deadline for installing emissions control equipment
mandated by a 1999 settlement of a lawsuit brought by environmental
groups under the U.S. Clean Air Act.

Edison declined to ask state regulators for permission to spend about
$1 billion to clean up the plant until after it had completed
negotiations to secure firm supplies of coal and the water needed to
transport it in a slurry pipeline from a mine in northern Arizona.

However, confidential talks with the mining company, Peabody Energy
Corp., and the mineral rights owners, the Hopi and Navajo Indian
tribes, haven't produced an agreement.

A change in Hopi tribal leadership Dec. 1 probably contributed to the
delay in reaching a deal, said environmentalists, who had expected to
receive a proposal from Edison asking for an extension of the Mohave
closure deadline.

A shutdown of the plant would eliminate hundreds of high-paying jobs
for tribal members working at Peabody's Black Mesa Mine. It also could
cause severe economic hardship for the Hopi Indians, wiping out 40% of
their $20-million operating budget for 2006.