Logan City denies power plant addition
On Jan. 7, all present members of Logan City Council refused participation in a sales contract with Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems to the satisfaction of many citizens at the meeting.
Resolution 24-47, “A resolution authorizing and approving the Power County Power Project Power Sales contract with Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems and related matters,” proposed that participating cities will be provided with reliable economic sources of electric power and energy.
Mason Baker, CEO of UAMPS, was present at the meeting to secure a deal with Logan. For the last two years, UAMPS has been working towards constructing a 364,000-kilometer natural gas-fired combined cycle generating facility in a town with a fitting name Power City, Idaho. Based on the contract, the estimated cost for this project is $700 million.
Cities that agree to pay their share of the costs associated with developing the project, primarily through raising electricity costs for citizens, will become partial owners and reap the generated power. According to an article by the Salt Lake Tribune, Logan was the last of 34 cities approached by UAMP and the only one to deny the offer. A couple of participating communities are Hyrum and Brigham City.
Mark Montgomery, Logan City light and power director, and Yuqi Zhao, electric resource manager, helped explain the needs of Logan’s growing population.
“We have peaks in the summer and peaks in the winter and peaks during the day, but there’s a steady burn of a certain amount of megawatt energy that the city has to have all the time, and that’s what baseload is,” Montgomery said.
The current baseload for Logan is 30 megawatts. Zhao elucidated with a 20-year forecast that the baseload is expected to increase annually.
To conceptualize this, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission explains, “a megawatt of capacity will produce electricity that equates to about the same amount of electricity consumed by 400 to 900 homes in a year.”
Three options were proposed to meet the exigency for power. The first was to purchase a larger block of power from existing providers, which carried increased financial risk and might not supply enough power. The second was to build a local facility, which could increase pollution, especially in the winter. The last option was to join UAMPS in their project.
At the beginning of the meeting, when members of the public were invited to speak to the council, Dax Gove, Logan City resident, approached the microphone.
“What I have noticed in my frequent returns and final settlement in Utah is this — progress, growth and industry are just other words for death,” Gove said. “I have seen Utah’s Capitol and its surrounding areas be swallowed up in more smog, more concrete, more earth-moving machines that are in every way antithetical to the wishes of everyday, honest people.”
The fact that the power plant’s energy would be generated using fossil fuels was the foremost concern of the citizens who spoke against the contract.
“We’re going to be looking at renewable projects that are going to be at a scale in that 100-megawatt range absolutely, but then there’s probably going to also be a need in the future as we look at long-term planning horizon for more dispatchable generation, meaning we control when it’s generating,” Baker said.
Almost every citizen who spoke during the public hearing after Baker’s explanation was adamantly opposed to the project.
Patrick Belmont, Utah State University watershed sciences professor and a member of the Renewable Energy and Sustainability Advisory Board, shared his opinion on the matter.
“There’s lots of innovations in renewable energy and energy storage. The cost of fossil fuels are highly uncertain over the next three decades and will likely be very volatile. Renewables are already cheaper, and the cost of renewables and storage keep coming down,” Belmont said.
After listening to the citizen’s concerns and deliberating on financial and environmental risks, the Logan City Council came to their decision. Council members Amy Anderson, Mark Anderson, Mike Johnson, Ernesto López and Jeannie Simmonds unanimously denied participation in the project, seeking alternatives to better benefit Logan.