The state legislature moved one step closer to keeping Intermountain Power Project’s two coal units running long after the plant’s operator agreed to shutter them in 2025.
A fourth substitute to House Bill 425 passed with overwhelming support in both houses of the state legislature during the 2023 session’s last day. It awaits the governor’s signature.
The bill ostensibly authorizes a deep dive into the possibility of the state acquiring the coal units from Intermountain Power Agency and keeping them and the jobs they supports out of a landfill.
Sen. Derrin Owens, Senate District 27 Republican representing the east side of Millard County, championed the bill in the Senate and urged his colleagues to support a legislative study that could help them decide later how to move forward, including the state simply taking possession of the coal units from IPA.
Owens said during Thursday’s floor debate that the study “will direct the state or show a path on whether we should keep the project entity power plant standing while the other project, IPP Renewed, continues on unabated, uninterrupted by the state.”
Owens said it was likely the study could lead to more legislation affecting IPP in the future.
He lamented that his substitute bill followed failed efforts at an earlier compromise bill. He said newspaper accounts showed IPA’s representatives to have accused him of breaking an agreement with them.
“I want to refute that, in that this project entity stepped away from the agreement by the article in the newspaper yesterday, when their public affairs person in my opinion mocked this body, saying we did not achieve what we agreed we were achieving,” Owens told his Senate colleagues, likely referring to reporting in The Salt Lake Tribune.
Owens received little pushback from colleagues inside the Senate. One senator who said they were opposed to the bill represents Bountiful City, a member of the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS), which owns some 14 percent of the power generated by IPP.
Sen. Todd Weiler, the Republican representing Senate District 8, said he was worried the fourth substitute bill was not as well crafted as a previous version and could have an adverse effect on the state’s environmental policies. He also specifically mentioned IPP’s out-of-compliance coal ash ponds, which leak and require a costly fix. An agreement between IPA and the Environmental Protection Agency rests on IPA simply shuttering the plant in 2025 in lieu of spending potentially hundreds of millions of dollars to bring the plant and ponds into regulatory compliance.
Weiler wondered if HB425 wasn’t trying to wave a “magic wand” in hopes the plant’s compliance problems would go away.
“This is by no means an attempt to wave a wand or take away the EPA’s (oversight),” Owens responded, before returning to speak more about the supposedly broken agreement he thought legislators had with IPA. “This breach of agreement I find very disingenuous. That I would be accused of breaking an agreement that we had worked with you (fellow legislators)…to find this resolution in space going forward and to honor that the project now in place would be able to go forward. This is a study, that’s what it is.”
The measure passed out of the Senate by a 19 to 7 vote with three members absent.
Compliance issues surrounding IPA came up again when the House took up the substitute legislation later the same day.
Rep. Ken Ivory, a Republican representing House District 39 in Salt Lake County, sponsored the original bill and championed it through the House during its various drafts. On Thursday he did so again, highlighting the need for Utah to protect the affordability, reliability and security of the state’s power resources.
Opposition was at times more vocal in the House debate than in the Senate’s.
Rep. Raymond Ward, a Republican representing House District 19 in Davis County, for example, asked Ivory if the idea to keep IPP’s coal units open was already predetermined regardless of the study’s conclusions.
Ivory responded by reading a line from the bill about the study’s goals to outline the viability of and steps necessary to keep the coal units operating if the legislature decides to do that in the future.
“I’m glad to hear it really is just to look at the different options in the study,” Rep. Ward responded. “IPP has been a great power plant for the state but it has had some problems. One of its problems is that its coal ash ponds are leaking into the groundwater. That leaking into the groundwater makes them be out of compliance with EPA regulations and need to have some plan in bringing that back into compliance if that is going to continue long term.”
Rep. Ward said legislators needed to be mindful of these environmental issues as the study’s results are looked at and “if the determination is reached to keep that coal plant open long term.” He also cited the hundreds of millions of dollars in likely costs associated with bringing the plant up to EPA compliance.
Rep. Joel Briscoe, a Democrat representing House District 24 in Salt Lake County, fought the bill from the beginning. He raised questions about portions of the legislation suggesting the state might at some future date take ownership of IPP.
“If that were to occur, would the state also acquire all the liabilities if it were necessary to shut the facility down and decommission it and clean up the site?” he asked.
Rep. Ivory said such thorny questions will be examined in the legislative study.
Like Rep. Ward, Briscoe, too, seemed to detect a fix was in already.
“It seems to me, Mr. Speaker, this is pre-ordained,” he said.
Rep. Steven Lund, a Republican representing House District 66 in Juab and Sanpete counties, took exception to some of the opposing viewpoints, painting them as emotional hyperbole.
Lund visited Delta with Owens after SB2002 passed in 2021 and told a town hall meeting he was concerned hydrogen power would harm the area’s water resources— though the primary byproduct of burning hydrogen is water. He asked Ivory a few questions, including how deep the groundwater was beneath IPP, how much contamination had been recorded and exactly how much it would cost to remediate. Ivory said he did not know any of those answers.
“Many times we talk about this we talk in hyperbole,” Rep. Lund responded. “Many times we talk in an effort to raise hysteria and emotions about a project. The fact of the matter is we have no idea where the groundwater is, how deep it is…This study will give us a much better idea on what the future of the IPP power plant ought to be.”
Another of the bill’s supporters in the House also pointed out the state is struggling with power supplies and could struggle more in the near future.
Rep. Colin Jack, a Republican representing House District 73 in Washington County, said Utah is slated to “demolish” current electric infrastructure that ages out, possibly reducing the state’s power output by 30,000 megawatts by 2030.
“We are already last year short of capacity, between the generation and the load…At the same time we are planning to electrify our fleet, which will increase our load by 40 percent, without accounting for any growth in demand for our power,” he warned. “It seems to me only natural that we would want to study whether or not we are going to tear down a pretty large power plant that is owned by the state of Utah, even though it’s been operated its whole life by the cities of California.”
After debate, the substitute version of HB425 passed out of the House by a 57 to 15 vote, three members absent.
IPA officials have previously warned that if they were to break their agreement with federal environmental regulators to shut the coal units as promised, then the EPA could call for immediate compliance with existing rules, potentially shutting the plant down if IPA were unable to comply within the EPA’s strict 135-day deadline.
