By Vernon Robison
Moapa Valley Progress
The Moapa Band of Paiutes is at odds again with regional utility company, NV Energy, and its operation of the coal burning Reid Gardner Power Station in Moapa. Last week, the tribe accused NV Energy of submitting phony air pollution monitoring data to state regulators.
Officials of the tribe have long complained that smoke and fine particles of coal ash, blown in the desert wind over the Reservation from the plant, have caused significant health problems among the community’s roughly 300 residents.
To monitor air conditions, NV Energy had installed a monitoring station on the Reservation near the Tribal office building, about a mile northwest of the plant. The utility had then hired a neutral, independent contractor to collect, record and report the data from this station. But tribal leaders claimed last week that the data reported to state regulators from that station had been falsified.
The tribe based its claim on documents obtained through a public records request. The documents show that, last summer, the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection (NDEP) was forced to discard about five years of dust pollution data for the monitoring station at the Reservation. The data was discarded after an investigation had determined that the information had been logged incorrectly by the independent contractor.
As a result of the investigation, NDEP officials blamed the discarded data on “human error” by the contractor. NDEP then issued a Notice of Alleged Air Quality Violation and Order (NOAV No. 2399) to NV Energy. But because the violations solely resulted from actions taken by the third-party contractor, the order was issued as a warning.
According to an NDEP summary report, it all began when an initial review of the quarterly air quality reports had indicated that sampling of dust particulates had not been reliably reported. In July of last year, the NDEP requested electronic data files from NV Energy in order to assess the integrity of the data. NV Energy immediately requested the data from the contractor, Environmental Monitoring Company, Inc. (EMC). At that point, EMC discovered that the data had been corrupted. As a result, NDEP began a formal investigation into the matter.
NV Energy hired Stroz Friedberg, a company specializing in forensic data recovery, to scour an EMC computer used to log the data and to see if anything could be recovered. Stroz Friedberg’s findings indicated that data from the monitoring station, logged onto extensive spreadsheets, had been simply copied and pasted into each subsequent spreadsheet over the years. Thus the data reported was nearly identical throughout the period between 2006 and early 2011. In the end Stroz Friedberg was unable to locate any other reliable data for that time period.
Having exhausted all efforts to recover the data, the NDEP report determined that “EMC had failed to follow appropriate procedures for collecting and reporting the data”. Because Reid Gardner had failed to meet its obligation to sample and record the particulates at the monitoring site, NDEP issued NOAV No. 2399 as a warning.
In a statement last week, NDEP said that there had been no evidence that NV Energy had intentionally submitted fake or falsified data. What’s more, the lost data was not information required for demonstrating the plant’s overall compliance with environmental standards, according to the NDEP statement.
“This [lost] data is used by NDEP for regional airshed modeling for resource management purposes,” the NDEP statement reads. “Air quality compliance at the facility is based on stack emissions monitoring of all four units at Reid Gardner.”
The stack emissions had been conducted appropriately as required between 2006-2010, the statement reads. Thus, “the facility was in compliance with all state and federal air quality standards and permit limitations and conditions.”
But that was not good enough for Moapa Band officials who are concerned about the health of their people. In a written statement last week, the tribe insisted that this was not just an error; but it constituted deliberate misconduct on the part of the utility and the state regulatory agency.
“The Moapa Paiutes, who live next door to the plant and endure the impacts of the facility’s air and ash waste pollutants, were never informed of the findings by the state or NV Energy and had to use a public records request to obtain the information,” the statement reads.
Lawyers for the tribe gave legal notice to the utility on Wednesday giving 60 days to “resolve the violations” of the tribe’s federal air quality permit or face a federal lawsuit.
“So many days when coal dust and ash has whipped into homes in our community, it turns out NV Energy wasn’t even measuring the pollution,” said tribal Chairman William Anderson in the written statement. “So we have no gauge on the extent of the threat families here have been exposed to. The level of deceit by NV Energy is truly shameful.”
NV Energy CEO Michael Yackira refuted the claims that there had been any deliberate misconduct in the case.
“As soon as those [data reporting] irregularities came to our attention, NV Energy launched a joint investigation with NDEP regarding the vendor,” Yackira said in a statement on Wednesday afternoon. “When reporting irregularities were confirmed, NV Energy immediately terminated its relationship with that vendor.”
“The Reid Gardner Station has continuous emissions monitoring in place for all regulated air pollutants, and has been and remains in substantial compliance with all regulatory requirements,” Yackira added. “Any reports that NV Energy falsified any documents or reports are patently false.”
In an additional complaint, the tribe accused the utility of routinely exceeding its “heat input” permit limits at Reid Gardner. If done, this can increase the plant’s pollution emissions.
The tribe’s documents claimed that the plant ran its Unit 3 generator above the boiler’s heat-input limits for more than 2100 hours, roughly a quarter of the year, in 2010 alone.
In their written statement, NDEP officials said that there was no evidence to support this claim.
“The Division is investigating new allegations that may have arisen through the tribe’s apparent misinterpretation of data,” the statement reads.
