06/23/2009

Associated Press

The Oregon Environmental Quality Commission has approved tougher rules that may require Portland General Electric to spend hundreds of millions of dollars more than planned to clean up pollution at its Boardman coal-fired plant.

The decision last week ended a multiyear process to meet federal requirements to reduce haze pollution in scenic and wildlife areas.

New filters and scrubbers at the plant in Eastern Oregon are expected to reduce acid rain and the haze clouding the Columbia River Gorge, Mount Hood and Hells Canyon.

Combined with plans to reduce mercury emissions, the pollution controls will increase rates by from 3 percent to 4 percent, PGE predicts.

The National Park Service and a coalition of environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, say the rules do too little too slowly.

The Boardman plant, 150 miles east of Portland, is the largest stationary source of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides in Oregon.

A 2008 study blames the plant for more than half of the haze in the eastern gorge at times in the winter and says it contributes to acid rain in the gorge, on Mount Hood and Mount Adams and to haze in 10 national parks and wilderness areas from Hells Canyon to Mount Rainier.

The new plan requires PGE, by 2014 to install updated burners and new scrubbers that will reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide by 80 percent and nitrogen oxides by 46 percent, at a cost of $280 million. That part of the plan is similar to what PGE proposed in 2007.

By 2018, the company will have to install an improved catalytic reduction system to cut nitrogen oxide emissions by 84 percent at a cost of $191 million — more than PGE proposed.

The environmental groups say there should be a deadline of 2014 for all new controls and that PGE should be held to pollution reductions of 90 percent or more.

The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality has said the plan will eliminate about 21,000 tons of combined sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide pollution per year, a 66 percent reduction, by 2014 and an 80 percent reduction by 2018.

The commission, which oversees the DEQ, required PGE to install the new pollution controls in three phases, beginning with controls for nitrogen oxides by 2011.

In 2014, the utility will install a scrubber to reduce sulfur dioxide and a filter to reduce sulfur dioxide, particulate matter and mercury emissions.

Those were parts of PGE's 2007 proposal to the DEQ.

The commission added a third step requiring PGE to install a more advanced catalytic reduction system on the plant's steam boiler to cut emissions of nitrogen oxides by 2018.

In 2007 PGE estimated the project at about $470 million but PGE spokesman Steve Corson said the latest numbers indicate a total nearer $700 million.

PGE provides power to about 814,000 customers between Portland and Salem and from Hillsboro to Mount Hood. The Boardman plant generates about a fifth of that power.