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$800 million Reliant plant near Johnstown would produce energy from waste coal Powering up, cleaning up Tuesday, March 20, 2001 By Tom Gibb, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Texas-based power giant Reliant Energy Inc. said yesterday it would build an $800 million generating station at the border of Indiana and Westmoreland counties.
It will be big enough to power about a quarter-million homes and feed mostly on the mountains of waste coal piled around the region's abandoned mines.
The plant -- two miles southwest of Seward, 10 miles northwest of Johnstown -- would be fired up in 2004 and take title as the largest plant in the world using waste coal-burning technology, Reliant spokeswoman Cindy Abram said yesterday.
Building a coal-burning plant isn't going to win Reliant a place in the hearts of environmentalists. But Houston-based Reliant is using the environment as a selling point -- promising both reduced emissions and a project that will gobble abandoned coal piles, many from long-idle mines, many the source of acidic runoff.
Among Indiana, Cambria and Somerset counties, there is probably 100 million tons of waste coal -- often high-sulfur, low-heat coal, usually free for the taking, mostly piled and abandoned. Over the plant's anticipated 50-year life span, Reliant should do "a pretty good job" of consuming most of it, said Richard Benedict, Reliant's director of business development.
"It's a good environmental project," he said. "It makes use of waste coal that's otherwise causing acidity in rivers and streams."
The commonwealth bought in. Half the project will be funded with $400 million in tax-exempt bonds approved by the Pennsylvania Economic Development Financing Authority. The authority also was sold on the expectation of jobs and more power capacity and the promise of a cleaner-burning plant swallowing waste coal, authority spokesman Jason Kirsch said yesterday.
The project, unveiled at a press conference yesterday, is still too new to have grabbed environmentalists' attention. For instance, Judith Johnsrud, chairman of the state Sierra Club's energy committee, said she had yet to hear of the project.
Beyond environment, Reliant's next selling point is jobs for an area bruised by mine closings.
By Reliant's estimate, between gathering the coal and firing the plant, the project will create about 260 jobs. A consultant's study forecast that spinoff work, from maintaining coal trucks to feeding workers, will create another 270 jobs, Benedict said.
The plant -- officially, Reliant Energy Seward LLC -- will replace the 80-year-old, 200-megawatt Seward Generating Station, another coal-fired Reliant plant, located on a neighboring tract. The old Seward plant will be shuttered in late 2003, sending "most or all" of its 60 jobs to the new plant, Benedict said.
"I don't see a lot of opposition, but there will be a lot of people with questions," he said.
Reticence, though, is likely to be tempered by the promise of employment. For instance, one drawback will be more tri-axle coal coal trucks rolling over nearby highways, mostly a network of two-lane roads.
Supplying the current Seward plant means about 250 truck trips a day, Benedict said. Feeding the larger replacement will mean about 700 truck trips.
"There's concern about the truck traffic," said Roberta Naugle, a supervisor in East Wheatfield Township, population 2,735. "But the supervisors are in favor of the project. My personal feeling is that we need the jobs."
Reliant had been pondering the project since last year, when it bought the Seward plant and a large chunk of former Pennsylvania Electric Co. plants from New York-based Sithe Energies Inc.
As generating plants go, Seward would not be a mammoth, even in its own neighborhood. Plants at nearby Homer City and Shelocta, for instance, offer more than three times the capacity. Still, it would produce 2 1/2 times more power than the existing Seward generating station, yet emit 20 percent less nitrogen oxide, Reliant estimates.
Sulfur dioxide output -- about 18,700 tons a year from the current plant, Benedict said -- should drop by 5,000 tons, the company says. Reliant will use technology already in operation in three smaller, earlier generation cogeneration plants in Cambria County.
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