Sierra Club to sue to halt coal-fired power plants in Arizona, others

The Sierra Club is threatening to sue builders of coal-fired electricity power plants in seven states including Arizona, for allegedly "failing to include the necessary mercury and other toxic pollution controls in their plant plans." They also described the coal-fired plants as "one of the largest sources of global warming pollution, creating almost 40% of our country’s carbon dioxide emissions."

Are they targeting the Springerville Generating Station Unit 4 expansion [right: SGS Unit 3 construction last year; credit: TEP] being built by Salt River Project? This is a 400 MW unit under construction that is due to be completed in late 2009, that will bring the plant's total capacity to 1560 MW. The Springerville plant supplies power to Tucson Electric Power (TEP), Tri-State Generation & Transmission, and the Salt River Project (SRP).

SRP says the SGS 4 plant will burn low-sulfur coal and the new technologies they are using will reduce the pollution from all four units to less than what just the 1 & 2 units produced.