| Reg Soepnel gives an update for Rocky Mountain Power to the county commission. |
The issue of a coal fired power plant in Sevier County will be put on the ballot in November reported Deb Dull representing Rocky Mountain Power. The RMP employees gave the Emery County Commissioners an update at their last meeting. Sevier County will vote once and for all if they want the proposed coal fired power plant or not. Dull reported there are grants available for small renewable power projects. Two of those projects are in Moab. “RMP is trying to be renewable conscious,” said Dull.
Reg Soepnel said there was a bushing failure at Huntington Power Plant which resulted in an outage. The outage is still under investigation and repairs are being made. Electric Lake might spill this summer. The James Canyon pump is running continually. Soepnel reported the Hunter Interchange will revert to Utah Department of Transportation ownership. RMP constructed the interchange and now UDOT will continue its maintenance.
Darrell Cunningham from Hunter said they are preparing to celebrate a safety award they received. They are preparing for the shut downs which will occur in 2010. They have to plan ahead two years before the project starts. Hunter I and Huntington I will have overhauls in 2010. Also at the same time they will change the electrostatic precipitator at the bag houses. It will save costs doing both at the same time. Other large projects include replacements in the control systems.
The mercury monitoring equipment is functioning well. Cunningham reported retirements are starting to hit. They hired two new enviro-analysists, two new journeyman mechanics and a mechanical engineer. They are also advertising for temporary farm workers. Cunningham said these temporary farm worker jobs work well for college students.
| Darrell Cunningham gives an update on Hunter plant. |
Gary Denhalter reported on operations at the Huntington Plant. Since the outage on Feb. 14 things have run well. They had two minor accidents in January, but since then they are back on track. They are celebrating their gold level status for a safety award, with only two minor reportable accidents last year. They are waiting for the completion of their new employee facility and will coincide the opening of that facility with the safety celebration in late April.
The new equipment installed at the bag house is functioning well and bag house emissions are in the 1-2 percent range now. “It has been a drastic improvement,” said Denhalter. Before the improvements the particulate emissions (opacity) were running at 20-30 percent.
Denhalter said they have a few openings at Huntington Plant. They have had a couple of retirements. They recently hired a mechanical supervisor and an enviro-analyist. They also need two farm workers for Huntington.
Dull reported Rich Walje, RMP president will be in the area on April 23 to host a luncheon where he will give an energy update.