Somebody should watchdog, but who?

By Phoebe Sweet

Wednesday, Sept. 5, 2007 | 7:15 a.m.

Government, that great creator of process, a champion of dotting its i's and crossing its t's, can appear awkward when trying to follow its own rules.

What happens, say, when one branch of government says something should be done, but other government agencies are unsure who should do it?

Case in point: remarks by the Environmental Protection Agency about plans for as many as three new coal-fired power plants in Nevada. The EPA wrote a letter to the Bureau of Land Management in June, wondering whether the generating plants are needed.

The BLM is involved in the issue because it controls the public land where the proposed White Pine Energy Station power plant would be built, near Ely.

The EPA said the BLM should examine the energy needs of the entire Southwest to ensure that "individual states or regions do not carry an undue burden of power generation."

In other words, the EPA wants to make sure there aren't more power plants being built than are necessary.

Nevada utilities periodically file detailed plans with the state Public Utilities Commission projecting power needs and explaining how constructing plants is good for their customers.

But it's unclear who - if anyone - actually studies whether there is enough demand in the Southwest to justify more commercial power plants - ones built by private companies to sell electricity in the marketplace.

One school of thought holds that so-called merchant power plant builders would only risk those investments if they had done their homework and determined a need for their electricity. And by and large, that's been the practice: to rely on their word that there's a need for more power plants.

But if you're looking for an agency that watches over merchant power developers, you aren't likely to find one, says Charlie Reinhold, a project manager with WestConnect, a trade organization for utilities that assesses regional power transmission needs.

"Once you get to the merchant side, they will build a plant if they think they can make a buck on it," Reinhold said.

Some regulators say there should be greater regional oversight of who is building plants and whether they're really necessary - the question posed by the EPA.

"There is no entity in the Southwest that looks at power plant siting, generation needs or resource requirements to any degree," said Federal Energy Regulatory Commissioner Jon Wellinghoff, a former Nevada consumer advocate. "There absolutely needs to be some type of regional ... planning in the Southwest."

A spokeswoman for Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons said there's plenty of proof three power plants are needed because of Las Vegas' growth, and plenty of government oversight already.

Part of that oversight comes from the EPA, which worries "that the density of new coal-burning plants proposed in Nevada is in excess of the demonstrated need for energy throughout the western states."

EPA officials, however, caution that they are only pointing out weaknesses in the BLM's review process, and not actually monitoring the approval process or ruling on whether the region's power needs are being met.

"There is this broader context of energy planning in Nevada and that should be considered in (the BLM's) decision making in this specific project," Nova Blazej, manager of the EPA's environmental review office in San Francisco, said in an interview. A draft environmental review of the White Pine Energy Station project "does not disclose the broader context of energy demand that this project would satisfy. It doesn't talk about who would purchase the power."

Blazej says it's not necessarily the BLM's responsibility to perform that review - but only to include the findings of such a review in the environmental assessment of power plant plans.

The BLM's draft review cites a study by a regional utility group that indicates that current plans for power plant development might not meet demand by 2014.

Kwin Peterson, communications specialist with the Western Electricity Coordinating Council, which wrote the report, said its studies look forward 10 years and "there are so many unknowns as you get further out. You know that there will be power coming from somewhere because the alternative is blackouts but as you get further out our ideas of where the power will come from get less firm."

That's where the federal permitting process falls shorts, said Patrice Simms, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. "It's inadequate when it comes to evaluating the big picture."

Doug Larson, executive director of the Western Governors Association's Interstate Energy Board, said the lack of regional energy planning is a shortfall of the western states. Although transmission lines are federally regulated, the need for power isn't assessed on a regional basis by policy makers.

Chris Hanefeld, a public information officer for the BLM, said questions about whether it's the bureau's job to determine whether more power plants are necessary sparked a philosophical discussion about the bureaucratic process.

But while they're pondering the philosophy of environmental permitting, plans to build three brand new power plants in Nevada march on.