By VERNON ROBISON
Moapa Valley Progress
After more than five decades of generating reliable energy to southern Nevada ratepayers, the Reid Gardner Power Station in Moapa quietly faded out of operation last week once and for all.
The plant’s Unit 4 generating facility had been running 24/7 since early January in an effort to burn through the last of its coal reserves. NV Energy officials had expected those reserves to last until around the end of February. But the coal supply actually stretched on into early March.
Finally, on Saturday, Mar. 11, at 9:22 pm, the last piece of coal was burned, and the plant’s huge furnace finally went silent.
Just A Change of Focus
But conditions didn’t stay quiet at the site for long. By the next Monday morning the facility was buzzing with activity once again. Now, however, the focus had changed. In the space of a weekend, efforts had gone from generating power round the clock to decommissioning the plant.
“There is still a lot of work to be done,” said Interim Plant Director Jason Hammons. “It is just less traditional work. We have now changed over to the efforts of making things ready for demolition.”
The process of decommissioning, demolition and reclamation of the land underneath the plant is expected to take about five years.
But crews at the plant haven’t wasted any time getting started on that process. Over the past two months, as the huge coal pile outside of Unit 4 has slowly diminished, plant staff has been cleaning up the coal yard. Last week, there was scarcely a sign that the huge mountain of black mineral ever existed.
In addition, heavy blasting could be heard deep inside the plant’s boiler late last week. Explosives were being used to dislodge ash residue and slag that had built up on the inside of the boiler walls. Those waste materials were being removed for disposal in the plant’s onsite landfill.
The crews also had begun the arduous process of stripping the entire facility of anything potentially hazardous. Oil must be drained from a myriad of motorized equipment. Computer components and electronic fixtures must all be removed. Even flourescent light bulbs and ballasts must be taken down and hauled away from the site before the facility can be turned over to a demolition contractor. That process alone is expected to take at least the remainder of this year, Hammons said.
Flipping the Switch
On Thursday morning, NV Energy invited the regional media to watch as Reid Gardner was officially disconnected from the electrical grid. It was a ceremonious moment for the utility which has been making a push away from coal-generated power and toward renewable resources.
In 2013, NV Energy, along with other stakeholders, supported state legislation that mandated a retirement of 812 megawatts of coal-fueled generation in southern Nevada by 2019. The bill provided for a replacement of that capacity with renewable energy and natural gas resources.
NV Energy retired Reid Gardner’s first three coal-fired units at the end of 2014. The company will eliminate its generation from the coal-fired Navajo Generating Station in Arizona by December 2019. Those actions along with the shutdown of Unit 4, will blow out the candle on all coal-generated power in southern Nevada.
But it was a bittersweet moment for Reid Gardner employees, especially those who have spent an entire career working at the plant.
“Of course, we have known this time was coming for a few years now,” said operations manager Todd Robison who has worked at Reid Gardner for 35 years. “But when it comes right down to it and it’s time to shut it down, it can be kind of an emotional thing for some of these guys after working so long on it. With so many experiences and time spent here, it becomes pretty personal.”
To physically disconnect the plant, a large mechanical linkage had to be pulled to open a 230,000-volt three-phase switch. Opening that switch officially separated the plant from the transmission grid. On Thursday, that final honor was given to Overton resident Mike Fetherston.
Fetherston has worked at the plant for nearly 45 years. He was on the crew that originally commissioned Unit 4 in 1983 when it was first launched into service.
“I think it was kind of fitting that the guy who first helped commission that unit should also be the last one to switch it off,” said NV Energy spokesman Mark Severts on Thursday.
Transitioning Employees
A lot has changed since the plant’s glory days. At its peak, Reid Gardner was operated as a baseload facility employing nearly 200 people.
In recent years, its role was reduced to supplying only peak summertime demand. During that time the plant staff has been gradually reduced. At the time of shut down, only 43 employees were still on staff. This reduction has been done gradually through attrition, both in transfers and retirements, Hammons said.
On Monday this week, 14 of the remaining Reid Gardner employees reported for work at new jobs in one of a number of NV Energy-owned gas-fired plants near Apex. The remaining staff will stay on to finish the decommissioning process.
“One of the chief challenges in this process has been redeploying our staff,” Hammons said. “We have taken a lot of efforts to work with them on the next steps in their careers: either to help them toward the process of retirement, or to transition them to a new role where they will be happy. I think it is significant that we haven’t had to lay anyone off.”
Cleaning Up
After the plant staff completes its work of decommissioning, a contractor will be brought in to do the actual demolition work. In the case of Unit 4, that will conclude with the delicate operation of bringing down a 500-foot smokestack, made of bricks covered in cement. That demolition probably won’t begin until early next year and will most likely continue to the end of 2019, according to Matt Johns, NV Energy’s director for environmental remediation.
After that, environmental clean up will continue at the site under the direction of the Nevada Department of Environmental Protection. The extent of that process will be determined by environmental studies that are ongoing, Johns said.
“We will be looking at data that is being gathered in soil and groundwater, and that will really drive the extent of our mitigation efforts,” Johns added.
As part of the environmental process, on-site holding ponds will be fully reclaimed, impacted soils at the site will be removed and replaced, and the plant’s on-site coal ash landfill would be closed down and capped. That work is expected to be completed by around 2022, Johns said.
After that the utility will continue to monitor soil and water impacts at the site for many years thereafter.
“It will always be considered a brownfield site,” Johns said. “But when the mitigation work is complete it will appear much more natural, of course, than it looks today.”
NV Energy has no plans yet for how the land will be used once the plant is gone. But with water rights, rail access and natural gas pipeline availability, it will remain a valuable property to the company, Johns said.
