Jan 16 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Scott Learn The Oregonian, Portland, Ore.

A coalition of five environmental groups said Tuesday it plans to sue to force Portland General Electric to install top-notch controls at Oregon's only coal-burning plant or shut it down.

Late last year, PGE proposed installing about $300 million of new controls at the plant in Boardman, 150 miles east of Portland. The plant's emissions muddy the air in the Columbia River Gorge and more than 10 protected parks and wilderness areas, including Mount Hood, Mount Rainier and Mount Jefferson.

But the coalition -- the Sierra Club, Friends of the Columbia Gorge, Northwest Environmental Defense Center, Columbia Riverkeeper and the Hells Canyon Preservation Council -- contends PGE's proposed pollution controls are well below those at other plants and what's required under state law and the federal Clean Air Act. On Tuesday, they filed a notice of intent to sue within 60 days.

The Boardman plant is a high-profile target for environmentalists. Coal plants are under fire nationwide as global warming concerns increase. And the Boardman plant, authorized in 1975, just missed having to comply with the Clean Air Act, meaning its controls aren't up to modern standards. Today, it's Oregon's biggest stationary emitter of carbon dioxide, as well as contributing to smog, haze and acid rain.

"We believe it's well past time for PGE to either make the investment or just retire the Boardman plant entirely," said Mark Riskedahl, director of the environmental defense center.

With coal relatively low-cost, PGE officials say, the Boardman plant is crucial to meeting Northwest power demand economically as the region grows. The 585-megawatt plant supplies a fifth of PGE's power generation.

PGE officials said they've backed state plans to curb global warming and stand ready to make a huge investment through 2013 to reduce emissions from the Boardman plant. Combined with plans to reduce the plant's mercury emissions, spending on pollution controls will increase rates by 3 percent, PGE predicts.

"We feel like we have more than stepped up to the plate on this issue," a PGE spokesman, Steven Corson, said.

None of the controls under discussion would affect carbon dioxide emissions. But the environmental groups say regulators should have long ago forced PGE to install industry-standard controls for particulate emissions, nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide as it built and then upgraded the Boardman plant.

Industry standard controls would reduce Boardman's smog-producing nitrogen oxide emissions by as much as 90 percent, the environmental groups say, versus an estimated 46 percent in PGE's proposal. Wet scrubbers would reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide, which contributes to acid rain, by as much as 98 percent, the groups say, versus 76 percent in PGE's proposal for semidry scrubbers.

But PGE estimates the tougher controls would cost $600 million -- double the price tag for the controls proposed by the utility -- and would use much more water without doing much more to improve visibility in parks and wilderness areas. The utility says the better controls wouldn't reduce emissions as much as the environmental groups claim.

Oregon's Department of Environmental Quality is evaluating PGE's proposal with the help of an independent expert.