Governor acts to bar coal-fired plants

BOISE – Gov. Jim Risch moved Wednesday to bar coal-fired power plants from Idaho by asking state environmental regulators to opt out of a federal pollution trading plan.

He’s following the recommendation of the Idaho Board of Environmental Quality, which in June voted unanimously against taking part in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s cap-and-trade program for mercury, which is emitted when power plants burn coal. Mercury has been linked to brain damage and birth defects.

Earlier this year, a Southern California utility owner, Sempra Energy, had proposed building a $1.4 billion coal-fired power plant in Jerome County. That prompted lawmakers in March to pass a two-year moratorium, and 8,500 people in south-central Idaho have since signed petitions opposing such plants.

“The public had it right,” Risch said after his announcement near the Snake River in Twin Falls. “They don’t want Idaho to become a source of emitting mercury.”

Risch’s move, which also will stop a proposed coal-gasification plant near Pocatello in eastern Idaho, is a reversal of former Gov. Dirk Kempthorne’s decision a year ago. Then, he had asked Idaho environmental regulators to draft rules allowing Idaho to participate in the EPA program.

According to that program – meant to reduce overall mercury emissions from U.S. power plants – each state is given a “pollution budget” based on existing mercury emissions levels.

But since Idaho has no coal-fired power plants – Vermont and Rhode Island don’t, either – its mercury budget is set at zero.

In order for companies such as Sempra to build a plant in Idaho, the state would have had to opt into the EPA plan so that mercury emission credits could have been purchased or traded here from coal-fired utilities in other states.

Risch says that’s not going to happen – at least until coal-plant technology becomes cleaner.

“Not in the foreseeable future,” he said, adding Idaho already has enough power-generating resources, including wind, geothermal and hydropower, as well as new nuclear reactors being developed at the Idaho National Laboratory near Idaho Falls – to support future economic expansion.

Environmental groups, along with agricultural and community groups that fought Sempra earlier this year, applauded Wednesday’s announcement.

“We’re just thrilled that he decided to keep mercury and coal plants out of Idaho,” said Rich Carlson, of the Idaho Rural Council, whose roughly 500 members, mostly small farmers and ranchers, feared a coal-fired power plant here could hurt water and air quality.

Democrats who earlier this year joined the majority GOP in backing a two-year moratorium, said the Republican governor’s move was politically savvy, given the groundswell of opposition.

“He read the tea leaves, saw the political landscape and saw it made sense to tell the feds that Idaho wants to control its own destiny,” said Senate Minority Leader Clint Stennett, D-Ketchum. “We don’t want to bring the poison here and send the electricity out of state.”