AUG. 6, 2010:NWLP
8/3/10
10:11 AM
Page 13
...Union clashes with Sierra Club over Boardman closure
(From Page 2)
gas, both fossil fuels. Coal is the dirt-
ier of the two, in terms of emissions.
Boardman was sited and permitted
in 1975, before the Clean Air Act be-
gan to take effect, but the law is catch-
ing up. The federal law requires
power plants to progressively lower
emissions like SOx, NOx, and mer-
cury. The problem for PGE is that
retrofitting Boardman to comply with
the law would cost, all told, about
$500 million. That cost calculation
could lead the investor-owned utility
to close Boardman.
If so, it would likely replace the
coal plant with two new natural gas
plants. That would mean construction
jobs for union workers, and operating
jobs for Local 125 members. One nat-
ural gas turbine has already been sited
at the Boardman location.
But natural gas plants require
fewer workers to operate — about 20,
says Boardman operations manager
Larry Smythe. So two such plants
would require 40 workers, making
most of Boardman’s current staff of
110 redundant. And that’s not count-
ing the railroad and coal mining work-
ers, nor the workers brought in to do
scheduled maintenance during peri-
odic plant shutdowns.
Workers at Boardman are pes-
simistic about the plant’s long-term
prospects.
“This place is gonna shut down,”
Scholl said — and with it, family-
wage jobs. “This is about as good as it
gets for a job in the trades,” said
Scholl, who previously worked union
jobs in a paper mill and on a tugboat.
Scholl, 37, supports his wife and two
children on his earnings. But uncer-
tainty about Boardman’s future has
prevented them from purchasing a
home in nearby Hermiston.
Coal plants don’t live forever. One
way or another, Boardman will close.
The debate is over when, and how.
Cesia Kearns wants Boardman to
close as soon as possible. Since
March 2009, Kearns has led the Sierra
Club’s “Beyond Coal” campaign to
shut down Boardman.
Marcy Putman, staff representative for International Brotherhood of
Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 125, is on a mission to save the jobs of the
110 of her union’s members who work at PGE’s Boardman Coal Plant.
“Coal is one of dirtiest sources of
energy we have,” Kearns says. “It’s a
19th century technology.”
Kearns describes Sierra Club’s
strategy to close Boardman as more
like silver buckshot than a silver bul-
let. Sierra Club is party to a lawsuit
against PGE. It organizes protest ral-
lies and members testify at hearings of
the Oregon Public Utilities Commis-
sion (PUC) and the Oregon Depart-
ment of Environmental Quality
(DEQ), which enforces the Clean Air
Act.
For Boardman to comply with the
Clean Air Act, PGE will be required
to install the “best available retrofit
technologies.” At a cost of about $35
million, PGE will install new “low-
NOx” burners next year that will re-
duce nitrogen oxide emissions by 46
percent. Then, a scrubber to reduce
SOx emissions 80 percent would be
installed in 2014, at a cost of $270
million. Additional NOx controls
would come in 2017.
PGE could spend all that money
and continue to operate Boardman.
But the company is concerned that
costs associated with possible future
carbon controls might make the plant
too expensive to operate anyway. So
PGE is proposing to close Boardman
Approaching the Boardman
Coal Plant, you see the
landmark smokestack, train
cars and a coal shute, along
with a weather-beaten sign
showing the names of all the
contractors who built the plant,
which came online in 1980.
voluntarily in 2020, and on that basis
is asking DEQ for relief from the re-
quirement to do the more expensive
retrofits.
DEQ countered with three options:
install just the low-NOx burners, and
close in 2015; install the low-NOx
burners, plus a cheaper SOx control
system in 2014 for a 35 percent reduc-
tion, and close in 2018; or install the
low-NOx burners, plus the $270 mil-
lion SOx scrubber in 2014, but avoid
the second phase of NOx improve-
ments, and close in 2020.
A separate rule will require PGE to
move forward to install technology to
lower mercury emissions 90 percent
by 2012. [Ironically, that will cause a
waste disposal problem. Smythe, a
former IBEW member, takes special
pride in the plant’s creative disposal of
fly ash generated by coal combustion.
Rather than being stored at an adja-
cent landfill, as originally planned, it’s
sold and used as an important ingredi-
ent in cement. But the mercury con-
trols will render fly ash unusable for
that purpose.]
The Sierra Club is sometimes a
union ally, marching with Teamsters
against NAFTA-style trade treaties, or
partnering with Steelworkers in the
Blue Green Alliance. In Northeast
Portland, Sierra Club is making its
member list available to organizers
who are signing up homeowners for
energy retrofits done by union-signa-
tory contractors. Kearns herself is
recording secretary of the Sierra
Club’s staff union.
But at Boardman, Sierra finds itself
at odds with a union — Local 125. Just
as Kearns serves Sierra Club members
by working to close Boardman, Local
125 staff representative Marcy Putman
serves her members by working to save
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it. It’s also personal: Her father-in-law
worked at Boardman.
While Kearns works to mobilize
Sierra Club members to write letters
and attend hearings, Putman works
tirelessly on the other side, visiting
and calling Local 125 members and
their families to make sure their
voices are also heard by PUC and
DEQ. Decisions by those two agen-
cies will guide PGE’s decision on
whether or when to close the plant.
Over 400 people turned out at a
June 23 PUC hearing in Portland.
PGE brought in workers from Board-
man, but the testimony was over-
whelmingly from environmentalists in
favor of closing the plant, including
Portland Mayor Sam Adams.
“It seemed like good versus evil,
truth versus lies,” said Boardman em-
ployee David Mabbott, who attended
the hearing. “Their side was based
largely on emotion.”
On Aug. 16, PUC will hold another
hearing, this time in Boardman. Put-
man expects there the commissioners
will hear a different tune; Local 125 is
calling on members to show up at that
meeting.
In September, the Oregon DEQ
will take public comment on the vari-
ous closure options. It will issue a fi-
nal decision in December.
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