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Power Company Plans to Expand Its Coal Plant in Limestone County

Posted on: Thursday, 22 June 2006, 21:00 CDT

By J.B. Smith, Waco Tribune-Herald, Texas

Jun. 22--NRG Energy Inc. is aiming to join the Central Texas coal rush with a new $1.2 billion boiler unit at its coal-fired power plant in the eastern corner of Limestone County, the company announced Wednesday.

The power plant, due to open in 2012, would provide about 100 permanent jobs, according to a news release from New Jersey-based NRG.

The company acquired the two-boiler Limestone Generating Plant in February when it bought out Texas Genco. NRG announced the third boiler Wednesday as part of $16 billion in new energy projects it is planning nationwide, including an expansion of the South Texas Nuclear Project. Company officials familiar with the Limestone project were traveling Wednesday afternoon and could not be reached for comment.

The third boiler at Limestone would add 800 megawatts a year -- the equivalent of the LS Power plant that is planned for Riesel. It is among nine coal-fired units now under consideration in Central Texas, including four boilers in eastern McLennan County.

Limestone County Judge Elenor Holmes said she is thrilled at the prospect of quality jobs and an increased tax base in her small county of 22,763 residents.

She said the Limestone County plant, built by Houston Lighting and Power in 1985, has been a blessing to the county's economy, helping to fund schools and roads.

"It's put more oil and sand on our county roads than anything else," she said. "We don't have any complaints about them." The Limestone plant, between Groesbeck and Jewett, currently burns Texas lignite, but the new plant would use cleaner-burning coal from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming.

Its sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions would be much lower, according to an air quality permit application filed Wednesday with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

Whereas the two existing boilers emitted 12,110 tons of nitrogen oxide last year, the new boiler would emit a maximum of 1,752, according to the application.

But environmentalists are expected to fight the air permit, saying the rash of new coal plants will have a cumulative impact on air quality in Central Texas and Dallas-Fort Worth.

Tom "Smitty" Smith of Public Citizen, one of the groups fighting the proposed coal plants in Central Texas, said none of the proposals go far enough in reducing the smog-forming nitrogen oxide that plagues Texas' large cities.

"It will threaten air quality in Waco and Austin, as the winds blow out of the east and northeast into those cities," he said. Smith said NRG should offset 100 percent of the pollution from the new unit by reducing emissions at the older boilers.

He added that Public Citizen would not oppose the new coal plants if they would use pollution-reducing coal gasification technology and sequester their carbon dioxide emissions underground.

"We would be more than willing to allow that kind of plant," he said. "We'd actively support them." The federal government is planning to use such technologies in a demonstration plant, called FutureGen, which would have near-zero emissions. NRG is a partner in the regional effort to land that coal-fired plant in Jewett, near the Limestone plant.

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To see more of the Waco Tribune-Herald, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.wacotrib.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, Waco Tribune-Herald, Texas

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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NRGE, TGN,

Source: Waco Tribune-Herald

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