Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council will join the fight to stop a coal-fired power plant from being built near Gerlach.

Neighbors and opponents John and Rachel Bogard say the environmental dangers from the plant are a global issue and not just a local one.

“When this coal plant spews all of its toxins, it goes all the way around the globe,” said John Bogard, owner of Planet X Pottery who lives three miles from the proposed plant location on the Smoke Creek Desert. “It’s one ugly plant.”

The Granite Fox plant is becoming a showdown between coal and renewable energy in the West, said Bogard, a member of the newly formed Nevada Clean Energy Coalition. The coalition was formed to fight the plant and promote renewable energy sources.

At meetings in Reno and Gerlach this week, residents can frame questions they’d like answered in environmental studies on the 1,450-megawatt plant, proposed for a site 90 miles north of Reno. The plant needs federal permission for a railroad spur across the Smoke Creek Desert to bring in trainloads of coal.

Reno environmentalist Susan Lynn said Reno-area residents should be concerned about pollution from the plant when the wind blows from the north. And she said the 25,000 acre-feet of water sought to cool the plant represents the area’s closest potential water source besides the Honey Lake Basin.

Sempra Energy officials say their proposed power plant will help meet the West’s growing energy demands with inexpensive reliable power. The company also proposes to tap into wind and geothermal power to produce another 200 megawatts.

“The electric generation system in the West needs to be a portfolio containing a mix of coal, natural gas, renewable and hydropower,” said Marty Swartz, Granite Fox project manager. “You have to consider how each of those plays a role in our energy security as well as reliability and availability. We will need additional power sources to meet base-load demand.”

Environmentalists contend water-consuming, air-polluting power plants should be a thing of the past and the area’s rich potential in wind and geothermal energy production should be fully exploited. Just over the Fox Range to the south, the Nevada Energy Park is hoping to find investors for a project to harness up to 1,300 megawatts of renewable power.

Both projects have applied to tie into a major West Coast transmission line that runs from the Columbia River south to Los Angeles. It skirts the Smoke Creek Desert near the proposed energy park. There’s not enough room on the line to carry energy from both projects.

Sempra is based in San Diego, where it owns the local utility. Greenpeace energy policy specialist John Coequyt said the company escapes California’s strict regulations on air and water pollution by producing power elsewhere and then importing it to the state.

The Granite Fox plant is the latest example, he said.

“These dirty fossil-fuel plants are eroding California’s goals of meeting new and existing demand with clean renewable energy and energy efficiencies,” Coequyt said. “That’s the official policy of the state of California. This is a ridiculous end-run around what California customers would want.”

The Natural Resources Defense Council is the nation’s largest environmental group focused on power plants, with expertise in clean air and regulation.

“This appears to be a place where no coal plant should be built,” said David McKintosh, a lawyer with the group, noting the area’s potential for renewable energy. The group’s senior lawyer is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Local environmentalist Bob Fulkerson is most concerned about 30 pounds of mercury he believes will come from the plant each year. When the winds are right, “the mercury and the other toxic pollutants that come out of the plant will end up in the Truckee River, Lake Tahoe and on our playgrounds. What are the long-term costs to public health to that?”

And he’s also worried about tying up so much water with one project.

“Can they prove in a cost-benefit analysis that Nevada is going to be better off from this?”

Swartz said the coal from Wyoming contains one tenth of a part per million of mercury. With current emission technology, 70 percent of that will be removed and captured in the ash. That ash could then be used for making cement.

Exactly how much mercury will go into the air is now being studied and an estimate will be made when the company applies for a state air-quality permit.

Results of the company’s preliminary model turned over to Washoe County health authorities shows the plant would produce about 50,000 pounds of pollutants a day. That model shows 30 pounds of mercury being released annually.

Sempra officials say they plan to use the best available emissions technology.

Meanwhile, Sempra Energy has applied for more than 50 water permit applications that would take much of the water in the valley. Those permits include certificated water rights as well as vested rights that existed before the state’s 1905 water laws.

David Rumsey, who is converting the Parker Ranch on the desert into a nature refuge, has hired a lawyer to challenge those claims and is asking the state water engineer for an accounting of all the water rights in the basin, a process which could take years.

“We will challenge these claims using every legal means at our disposal,” Rumsey said. “We won’t let Sempra divert the precious water of the Smoke Creek Basin – so vital for ranching, wildlife, and recreation – to feed the insatiable energy demands of Southern California.”

The plant represents a $2 billion investment and would be built in two phases. It would hire about 120-150 permanent workers and set up a housing area north of the plant for an estimate 800 construction workers.

Construction would result in $100 million in sales taxes. Then it would pay about $15 million a year in property taxes and $10 million in sales taxes.

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