By GENE KEMMETER
of The Gazette
Plover area residents will actually have little say in siting a power plant in Plover, which would be the latest in a string of natural-gas fueled power plants that are driving up heating costs for area residents.
And the Plover plant could block future development in the area, possibly expansion of paper mills along the Wisconsin River.
State statutes preclude a local voice in a decision, said Jeff Butson, public affairs director for the Wisconsin Public Service Commission, Wednesday. He said that the proposed power plant by Southern Energy Inc. (SEI) is a "merchant" plant, one that would be constructed with the intent to sell the power to others.
Oversight is prescribed by state law, he said, and the plant overrides local zoning ordinances. The PSC has to act on a proposed plant within 180 days after an application is received, or the plant is automatically approved.
Basically, he said, the PSC has to make sure environmental laws are met and the developers of the proposed plants have switched to natural gas for fuel to meet more stringent environmental rules. Natural gas plants have cleaner emissions than coal-fired plants.
That, Butson said, is certainly one of the reasons driving up prices for residents who use natural gas to heat their homes. "Today's price of gas is a market function," he said. "It's not a gas shortage."
The price of gas was depressed in the second half of the 1990s, he said, so companies weren't exploring for more because of the low price. Now the demand has outstripped supplies, he said.
Joe Ancel, air team supervisor in the Wisconsin Rapids office of the state Department of Natural Resources, said the plant could affect plans for other developments using natural gas, particularly something desiring to locate near it.
Natural gas plants release oxides, he said, and the amount of oxides released in an area is limited, so the farther away the plants are from each other, the better. "One thing that will probably be used up is oxides," he said.
Most of the recent additions to Stora Enso (formerly Consolidated Papers Inc.) facilities are natural-gas-fired rather than coal-fired or oil-fired because natural gas is cleaner burning, he said.
The possible impact won't be known, he said, until Southern Energy submits its permit application with computer modeling of pollutants emitted from the smoke stacks. Those maximums are then compared to ambient air, he said.
Prior to an informational display session on Thursday, Sept. 28, several representatives of Southern met with media members to address questions.
Asked about the emissions being similar to 500,000 vehicles in the area driving 10,000 miles per year, Dave Seitz, project director and officer manager for RMT Inc., a consultant to SEI, said "carbon dioxide is not a regulated air pollutant." He said 14,000 vehicles on Highway 54 pass the site daily, and 49 percent of carbon dioxide comes from trucks and cars on streets.
And natural gas is 40 to 60 percent cleaner than a coal-fired plant, he said.
Chuck Griffin, communications manger of SEI, said talking about carbon dioxide as a pollutant is misleading because the scientific community is split about any possible effects, such as the "Greenhouse Theory."
He said SEI looked into wind generation but it didn't work well in the Southeast. "It takes a lot of wind generators to make electricity, and we would need hundreds for a plant of this size," he said, adding that wind generators also kill birds.
Tim Berrigan, director of development for SEI, said a search to construct a plant was narrowed to Wisconsin because the state gets 15 percent of its power from outside the state.
The village of Plover site, and an alternative site across the road, is near a power transmission line and water (the Wisconsin River).
Robert W. Lewis, SEI director of external affairs in the Midwest Region, said SEI officials met with the Portage County Business Council and the proposed sites were brought to SEI's attention.
The plant would draw about 4 million gallons of water per day from the Wisconsin River, about one-half of 1 percent of the river's average low flow and would return about 2 million gallons at temperatures of 90 to 100 degrees.
Seitz said the water returned to the river might increase the temperature by tenths of a degree because the DNR has drafted rules on thermal return. He said he didn't know if the return to the river would leave open water near the pipe during the winter months, possibly affecting ice fishing.
He said SEI officials have asked UW-SP natural resources staff to provide input about the proposal.
Because the plant would be fired by natural gas, a 24-inch pipeline would have to be extended about 12 miles to the site. According to a display at the informational session, that connection would come from a line east of Stevens Point near County Trunk J, north of Highway 10. The connection would angle southwest to Porter Drive and Kennedy Avenue, then south and west along Eisenhower Avenue to Pleasant Drive and west to the site.