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The company that owns the coal- and oil-fired Salem Harbor Power Station expects to shut the plant down within five years, according to a company executive.
The owner, Dominion Resources Inc. of Virginia, asked to de-list the plant in October, a move that would relieve the company of any responsibility for providing power generation in the future. A company executive confirmed at an investor conference this month that the plant won’t stay open for long.
“We have announced that our two coal plants will shut down in the future when environmental rules are clear. The first is Salem Harbor in the Northeast,” said Mark McGettrick, Dominion’s CFO, during the Edison Electric Institute Financial Conference on Nov. 2, according to a transcript.
“In the near future, certainly in this five-year horizon, we would expect Salem Harbor plant to shut down,” McGettrick said. “We will not invest any capital for environmental improvements at Salem Harbor.”
The 745-megawatt plant is located on a 65-acre waterfront site in Salem, and employs 145 people. It has been in operation since 1951 and is among the state’s largest sources of power.
Dominion spokesman Dan Genest said the company is basing its plans on the expectation that the U.S. Environmental Protection agency will put stricter regulations on nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide emissions in place by 2015 or 2017.
Genest said the company hasn’t set a date for closing the plant, and that the company could see scenarios in which the plant does not end up closing — such as if the EPA regulations are delayed, or if the operator of the state’s power system rules that the plant is crucial for grid reliability.
Environmental advocates, such as the Boston-based Conservation Law Foundation, have called for Salem Harbor to either close or put stronger environmental measures in place. In June, the foundation filed a federal lawsuit alleging hundreds of violations of the U.S. Clean Air Act at the power plant in recent years.
Coal plant operators around the U.S. have also been under increasing pressure from government and public scrutiny due to climate change, since coal produces the largest amount of carbon dioxide emissions of any power source.
In 2007, a steam explosion at the Salem plant killed three workers, and the next year the federal Occupational Safety and Hazard Administration issued 10 serious citations following an investigation. OSHA said the investigation found that the company “failed to take effective steps to protect employees against the hazards of burns and other bodily injuries from hot ash and steam” from a ruptured boiler. The area where the rupture occurred had not been entered or inspected in more than nine years, OSHA found.
Dominion, based in Richmond, Va., also plans to shut down another coal plant, State Line Power Plant in Indiana, by 2017, McGettrick said at the investor conference.
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