At Tuesday's Town Hall Meeting

On the evening of Tuesday August 14 Cochise County Supervisor Paul Newman convened a town hall meeting in Bisbee about the proposed Bowie Power Plant. Approximately 85 people attended. Kim Vacariu attended and provided his summary of the meeting from which I prepared these notes. The Sierra Vista Herald ran two stories on the meeting – on Wednesday and Thursday. There's also an account of the meeting at littlebigdog .

At the meeting County Administrator Jim Vlahovich announced that the Supervisor's next work session on the plant has been postponed at least three weeks to approximately September 14 to allow the consultant more time to complete the report. The actual vote by Supervisors to approve the Master Development Plan for the site will also be delayed, probably until mid-October at the earliest.

David Getts (SWPG General Manger) probably saw for the first time a lot of people solidly opposed to the plant, who presented thoughtful, non-confrontational questions--many of which he couldn't answer. One quote--"I would love to do a solar energy project if I could only find someone interested in paying to buy the product." This was 10 days after the U.S. House of Representatives passed a 15% by 2020 Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) amendment to the energy bill, H.R. 3221. And Arizona has its own renewable energy goal.

Governor Napolitano's representative, Steve Ahearn, gave a non-committal presentation. However, he is the Governor’s conduit to the ACC, and he did hear a lot of good reasons why the plant should not be built.

Nancy LaPlaca, an environmental advocate from Colorado, who attended at her own expense, gave a very compelling presentation. She pointed out that solar power costs about 4 cents more per KWH than coal-fueled power, but when you factor in the huge expense of carbon sequestration/recapture the two energy sources cost the same per KWH. (And you don’t have slag dumps and evaporation basins!) She is affiliated with the The Energy Justice Network, which provides an excellent resource on IGCC plants at http://www.energyjustice.net/coal/igcc/ .