Nevada Power releases facts on plant’s toxic emissions

Thursday, June 10, 1999 | 11:37 a.m.

Nevada Power Co.'s Reid Gardner coal-fired plant in Moapa Valley released 52.7 tons of six toxic metals and two acids from generators into the region's air this year.

The power company on Wednesday gave to the Environmental Protection Agency its first report on the 650 toxic chemicals its plants release into the air, Nevada Power environmental health and safety director Dennis Schwehr said Wednesday.

A new federal law requires utilities and mining operations to report on pollutants annually. Industries have been required to report the information, which is due July 1, for years. Nevada Power was the first utility in the state to release its report to the public.

The Reid Gardner plant, about 40 miles northeast of Las Vegas, was the only Nevada Power generator producing reportable toxic emissions into the air, Schwehr said.

The metals include copper, chromium, manganese, zinc, lead and barium. The two acids are hydrogen fluoride and hydrochloric acid, which produce the bulk of the emissions at 24.5 tons and 25 tons a year, respectively.

Although the emissions may seem like a lot, 90 percent of those toxins are in ash that falls to the ground and is captured by pollution equipment, Schwehr said. The solid ash particles are contained in an on-site landfill that is 180 feet above the Muddy River, he said. The Clark County Health District permits the landfill to operate.

"We did not know how much metal was in the air until we measured this year," Schwehr said.

No toxins are released into natural water bodies, such as the Muddy or Virgin rivers leading to Lake Mead, Southern Nevada's major water supply, he said.

Nevada Power released its report months before it would have become public, Schwehr pointed out. While it is due to the EPA on July 1, the information would not go on the federal agency's website until November, he said.

The other power plant of concern in Southern Nevada belongs to Southern California Edison and operates in Laughlin, 90 miles southeast of Las Vegas. Nevada Power owns 15 percent of that plant.

"Those two power plants would lead the pack in toxic emissions," Clark County Health District Air Pollution Control Director Michael Naylor said.

The Laughlin plant generates about three times as much power as Reid Gardner, so its toxic emissions would be roughly three times those of Nevada Power's plant, Naylor said.

"Those releases are not minuscule," Naylor said of the two utilities.

Southern California Edison will release its toxic inventory on July 1 because the utility is still adding up the figures, Nader Mansour, the utility's manager of environmental regulation, said.

"It's not the quantity that matters, it's what the exposure means," he said.

Unfortunately, the EPA's reporting system does not interpret the public health impacts, Mansour said. -00005