Proponents: EPA haze plan will create jobs, boost economy; critics: benefits overestimated, plan raises electricity rates

The report was published by the Ian Goodman Group, Ltd.

The EPA is proposing to install pollution controls to limit pollution from North Dakota’s Milton R. Young and Leland Olds coal-fired power plants.

Minnkota officials say the technology will cost more than $500 million to install at the Young station, hasn’t been proven to work on North Dakota lignite coal and wouldn’t perceptibly improve visibility even if it did work.

North Star Electric Cooperative, which supplies power to members in Borderland, receives its power from Minnkota. North Star representatives have said the EPA plan will likely force a large increase in rates to local users.

“We are not saying that the technology wouldn’t create jobs, but Minnkota only has 164 employees to run the entire Milton R. Young Station today,” said Minnkota spokesman Kevin Fee in a statement to The Journal. “We would not be adding anything close to 150 full-time, permanent jobs for selective catalytic reduction technology. Most of the other jobs would be temporary construction positions.”

But Christine Goepfert, of the Minnesota office of the National Parks Conservation Association, said in a prepared news release that the report finds that EPA’s requirements would spur 5,100 jobs in North Dakota over several years of construction, as well as 2,600 in Minnesota and surrounding states. The report notes that an additional 180 permanent operations and maintenance jobs are associated with the proposal. These jobs are in addition to another 12,500 jobs over five years and 950 permanent jobs brought about by other regional haze requirements, according to the report.

“Haze may seem like a trivial issue, but it’s a basic sign of whether or not the air is healthy,” said Goepfert. “EPA’s plan will not only restore places like Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota and Voyageurs National Park in Minnesota that Congress set aside to protect, but it will also improve public health and contribute to the local and regional economy.”

Fee said the report isn’t credible.

“This just another Sierra Club-commissioned flawed report,” said Fee. “The cost of any jobs added would be reflected in electricity rates consumers pay. Why would consumers want to pay salaries for people to work on technology that will fail? Yes, SCR has not been proven to work on cyclone boilers using North Dakota lignite coal. Even if it did work, the improvement in visibility in national parks and wilderness areas wouldn’t be discernible to the human eye.”

This report follows on the heels of other recent reports documenting the economic benefits of reducing haze, according to Goepfert. She pointed to a recent ratepayer report that she said found that the cost to ratepayers of EPA’s plan was lower by 60 percent or more than what had previously been reported.

Goepfert said the EPA’s proposed controls are also expected to ease the nearly $500 million annual burden in health costs placed on the region by the MR Young and Leland Olds facilities.

But Fee said the Sierra Club is again trying to divert attention from what regional haze is about — visibility.

“In the first paragraph of the press release, it talks about protecting public health,” said Fee. “As we all know, regional haze is about visibility. It is not about health and welfare. A study by the North Dakota State Department of Health found that international and out-of-state sources are the most significant cause of impaired visibility in the state’s national parks and wilderness areas. If all North Dakota facilities were shut down, the regional haze reasonable progress goals still wouldn’t be met.”