What if…
Former workers at the Hatfield Ferry Power Station in Greene County and the Mitchell Power Station in Washington County can only wonder why they weren’t owned by a company like GE Energy Financial Services instead of FirstEnergy.
FirstEnergy suddenly closed its Hatfield Ferry and Mitchell power stations last fall, idling 380 workers with little or no advance notice.
The company claimed it was losing money at the plants because market prices for electricity were at historic lows due to an abundance of low-cost natural gas.
The company added that it didn’t want to spend the $275 million necessary to make the plant compliant with new federal anti-pollution laws.
However, this was somewhat puzzling given that Allegheny Energy, which sold the plants to FirstEnergy back in 2011, had already spent $700 million to install scrubbers at the plants several years ago.
Now it turns out that GE Energy Financial Services has committed to installing $750 million worth of pollution- control equipment by 2016 at its Homer City Generating Station in southern Indiana County.
According to Associated Press, the new equipment should allow the utility to make deeper cuts in sulfur dioxide emissions than required by government regulations, ensuring the financial solvency of the plant for years to come.
Amazingly, the plant owner claims it can meet the pollution requirements without increasing utility bills for the 2 million households it provides with power.
“We believe in the plant’s long-term value and that installing equipment will enable it to comply with environmental regulations,” said Andy Katell, a spokesman for GE EFS, which has been the plant’s primary owner since 2001.
The investment has been a long time in coming as the coal-fired power plant was regarded as one of the worst polluters in the country for a long time.
For more than 40 years, Homer City has spewed sulfur dioxide from two of its three units completely unchecked, because it is largely exempt from federal air pollution laws passed years after it was built in 1969.
Three years ago, the plant was the first to sue the Obama administration over a rule to force it to reduce its sulfur dioxide pollution, arguing it would spike electricity prices and cause “immediate and devastating” consequences.
None of those dire predictions came to pass, and the Supreme Court has upheld the Environmental Protection Agency’s rule in the case.
A class-action lawsuit filed by local citizens to get the plant to clean up its pollution also failed. But the Sierra Club took legal action against the plant’s owners and reached a settlement requiring limits on sulfur dioxide emissions.
Homer City shows how political rhetoric sometimes gets too heated, with scientific objectivity being overwhelmed by partisan attacks.
Republicans, including U.S. Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Hollidaysburg, who represents all of Fayette County and parts of eastern Greene and Washington counties, have claimed that the Obama administration is waging a war on coal.
They accuse Obama of trying to shut down all coal-fired power plants in the country.
Well, they’re not shutting down the Homer City Generation City, thanks in large part to a massive investments by its owners.
FirstEnergy, meanwhile, thought nothing of the kind and quickly threw in the towel, leaving 380 people out in the cold without their well-paying jobs.
Of course, no one can force FirstEnergy to reopen those plants now.
But you can’t help but think how different things could have been if GE EFS instead of FirstEnergy had owned the Hatfield Ferry and Mitchell power stations.