Clean energy advocacy groups are accusing the Arizona Corporation Commission of attempting to silence its critics following a controversial vote to exempt a 200-megawatt power plant from environmental review.
The commission voted 4-1 last week to overturn a previous decision by its Power Plan and Line Siting Committee and exempt UniSource Energy’s Mohave County expansion from environmental review.
Commissioners cited state law that only requires new plants over 100-megawatts to undergo the environmental review.
The law defines a plant as a “separate thermal electric, nuclear or hydroelectric generating unit with a nameplate rating of one hundred megawatts or more.” Because UniSource Energy’s expansion is made up of four individual 50-megawatt units, Commissioner Nick Myers said the commission had no choice but to exempt the expansion from review.
But a half-dozen critics disagreed, and say the vote upended decades of commission precedent.
Previously, the commission has treated multiple units on the same site as a single unit. Critics also pointed to a clause attached to the original law passed in 1971 that said lawmakers intended to regulate “major new facilities” that “cannot be built without in some way affecting the physical environment where the facilities are located.”
After the vote, the Sierra Club and Arizona Solar Energy Industries Association issued press releases criticizing the ruling. They say it creates a loophole that would exempt most new gas plants from environmental review if utilities subdivided larger plants into multiple smaller units.
That prompted a response from commission staff, who alleged the press releases contained inaccurate information and asked both organizations to issue corrections.
“We would like you to issue a correction to the news release,” Corporation Commission spokeswoman Nicole Garcia wrote to both groups.
Sandy Bahr, director of the Sierra Club’s Grand Canyon Chapter, claimed the correction request was simply an attempt by the commission to silence critics who disagreed with its vote.
“I have to say I was pretty shocked that they sent that,” Bahr said. “I think that is really a new low for the Arizona Corporation Commission to try to intimidate groups and individuals who are weighing in to try to promote better policies.”
Bahr, who has appeared before the Corporation Commission for over 20 years, said she had never received a similar request from the commission after other contentious votes.
“We have never had that happen before, so I was pretty shocked and also appalled,” Bahr said.
Specifically, commission staff claimed the headlines topping the Sierra Club release – “ACC Eliminates Environmental Reviews for Most New Methane Gas Plants” and “Reversal Will Prevent Environmental Accountability From Arizona Utilities” – and the Arizona Solar Energy Industries Association release – “ACC Waives Environmental Review of New Gas Plants” – were not accurate.
Commission staff also took issue with claims in the releases that the vote exempted the UniSource plant from environmental review and created a loophole for new gas plants to evade the regulatory process.
“The Commission’s Decision means that the Commission does not have mandatory jurisdiction over electric generating plants under 100 MW for line siting purposes, a result dictated by law,” Garcia said in an email to the Sierra Club. “The Commission’s Decision does not exempt UNS Electric, Inc., or any other utility, from environmental reviews. UNS Electric, Inc. is still required to obtain several permits from state and local agencies, including the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality.”
Garcia said the utility is also required to obtain a certificate of environmental compatibility for transmission lines that will connect to the plant expansion.
Both the Sierra Club and Arizona Solar Energy Industries Association say there’s nothing inaccurate about their claims.
“As a preliminary matter, the purported inaccuracies in our press release are untrue,” Arizona Solar Energy Industries Association Executive Director Autumn Johnson wrote to the commission. “Rate cases do not include environmental review of plants. There is no other place with a review of the total environment or a review of the items as outlined in [state law] which is why the statute exists.”
Like Bahr, Johnson levied allegations of intimidation.
“Regardless, this request raises concerns regarding censorship of parties that appear before the Commission, as well as the public,” Johnson wrote. “The Commission may very well not like or agree with the perspective of stakeholders, but that does not make it acceptable to try and curtail their speech.”
Bahr said her press release expressed the same views the group presented to the Power Plant and Line Siting Committee and the Corporation Commission during separate hearings on UniSource Energy’s request.
Some of those arguments were similar to those cited by the chairman of the Line Siting Committee in his order initially denying the request.
“The decision by the Power Plant and Line Siting Committee was overwhelming; it was 9-2,” Bahr said.
In a statement, Garcia denied the requests were an intimidation tactic.
She said the emails, sent at the direction of Commission Executive Director Doug Clark, were only requests and “they do not have to take action if they so choose.”
“Asking for factual accuracy is not ‘intimidation’ and to characterize it as such reflects a poor understanding of what occurred,” Garcia said. “The letters politely asked for corrections to be made to factually erroneous statements contained in their press releases. It is standard practice for an entity to ask an author to make corrections to a published document when information is found to be incorrect, misleading, or no longer valid.”
