BOARD01506 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

Now, we are not certain about this number right now, because we have had no experience in operating wet limestone scrubbers.' But on the assump- tion, we have been ordered by the Air Pollution Control Commission to put scrubbers on Hayden -- or on Craig units 1 and 2. Those scrubbers will cost $70 million, and they will use a considerable amount of water. Our estimates are now that we will be using 20 acre-feet of water per megawatt :annually to run steam-electric generating stations, where you I have to put in scrubbers. And we are operating on a zero discharge moat here, where we will not return any water back to the stream. We will use it, reuse it and reuse it, until it is so concentrated with, minerals and salt that we can no longer use it, and we will put it in a reservoir and evaporate it. Actually, we will reuse about 90 percent of the water that we divert from the stream. Basically, our needs in the southwest are growing rapidly. So beyond Craig unit 3, we are planning a unit somewhere in the southwest. We presently have a unit here at Nucla. It is a very small plant. It is the first one that we constructed. It is only 36 megawatts. We have some flow rights there that amount to about 61 cfs. However, they are such late rights that they are of very little, value to us. We have filed on additional water out of the San Miguel River and have an agreement with the San Miguel 'project, if that is ever built, that we will abandon our flow rights for a continuous 4 cfs with an assurance of some continuous 4 cfs from the river at that station, and as a result, have constructed cooling towers. We used to run a once-through cooling on that station. To use the water a little more efficiently, we have just completed a cooling tower station and can get by with about 4 cfs. There is an amount of coal in the Dakota Sands near Nucla, as well as in this area near Cortez, and also in the Durango area, as well as a very substantial coal supply up the North Fork of the Gunnison, up in the Paonia area. So we show a future plant here (indicating), but it can be located at either -- I would say west of Delta, using the North Fork coal or in the Nucla area, Cortez, or Durango area, and we have pres- ently made some extensive investigations on water. The possible water supply for a:i.'plant, if we happen to locate it near Delta, would be the Curecanti unit along the Gunnison River. There is some industrial water available there. Now, the potential of purchasing water from the San Miguel Project, there is some 25,000 acre-feet of M&I water associated with that project. The Dolores -- the potential is rather small, as I understand it. But there is a possibility,. which we are looking at very closely, of :using I the effluent from the city of Cortez, plus some of the saline water, and reconditioning that as a result of :irrigation from the Dolores Project. We have not made too much of an investigation on the Animas-La Plata, but we are seriously looking at that, because there is a large coal supply in that area. -4-