Mohave Facility Won't Be Reopened
After months of negotiations with two Indian tribes and the world's largest coal company, Southern California Edison Co. said Monday that it couldn't find a profitable way to reopen its heavily polluting Mohave power plant on the California-Nevada border.
Edison mothballed the giant coal-fueled generating station Jan. 1, a deadline imposed by a settlement in an environmental lawsuit that required the installation of about $1 billion of pollution-control equipment.
Since then, the Rosemead-based utility and its minority partners, including the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, have been working to cut deals that would reopen the plant -- even as recently as Friday. Edison needed to secure coal to operate the facility and water to push pulverized coal through a 270-mile pipeline from a mine in northeastern Arizona to the plant's Laughlin, Nev., location.
"It's simply not feasible to move forward at this time," Edison Senior Vice President Richard Rosenblum said.
Edison, a subsidiary of Edison International, told more than 200 workers at the power plant Monday that they would be laid off.
Edison abandoned plans to revive the Mohave plant for a combination of reasons, including the possibility that California would begin capping emissions of greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming, Rosenblum said. Another factor was the 2026 expiration of contracts with Nevada for Colorado River water to cool Mohave's turbines, he said.
Edison's 56% share of Mohave's 1,580 megawatts provided low-cost electricity to about 7% of the utility's 13 million customers. However, the company said Mohave's loss shouldn't threaten Southland electricity supplies because Edison recently began operating a new natural-gas-fired power plant in Redlands.
Edison hasn't decided whether to decommission or sell the Mohave plant, Rosenblum said.
Edison's announcement that it wouldn't push to reopen Mohave "caught us by surprise
The co-owners of the coal, the 250,000-member Navajo Nation and the 7,000-member Hopi tribe, are expected to lose hundreds of high-paying mining jobs and about $40 million in annual royalty payments and other revenue from the mine's operator, Peabody Energy Corp.
