Utah environmental activists are criticizing the Environmental Protection Agency for approving an expansion of the Bonanza Power Plant in Uintah County, saying the agency should have held off until it formulates a carbon dioxide control regulation.

But the EPA says it does not have authority to regulate carbon dioxide from a power plant.

The 110-megawatt, coal-burning unit would be built at the site of the present plant 35 miles southeast of Vernal. The Bonanza plant is owned by Deseret Power Electric Cooperative, which has offices in South Jordan. Last month, the company received a final air quality permit to construct, issued by the EPA Region 8, Denver.

The permit says little about controlling carbon dioxide, which is released by burning coal. CO2 is a greenhouse gas that has been blamed for global warming.

In April the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the EPA has the authority to regulate CO2 from car emissions. By extension, some environmental groups believe CO2 emissions from stationary sources, such as power plants, also should be sharply regulated.

Tim Wagner, director of the Utah Smart Energy campaign for the Utah Chapter of the Sierra Club, said the Bonanza plant expansion is not the only proposed new power plant in Utah that should fall under strict CO2 rules.

Others are a proposed third unit at the Intermountain Power Plant near Lynndyl, Millard County, which is on hold because California has imposed new environmental restrictions on power it imports; a plant near Sigrid, Sevier County, which would produce 270 megawatts; and a fourth unit that has been considered for the Huntington Power Plant in Emery County. The last, said Wagner, "has been put on hold for a variety of reasons."

"We would certainly encourage a complete moratorium across the state" to prevent new coal-fired power plant construction until EPA issues a regulation on CO2, he said.

Jessica Emond, deputy press secretary for the EPA, Washington, D.C., said the agency remains committed to addressing the long-term challenges of global climate change.

"In fact," she said in an e-mail comment, "EPA is currently taking the first steps toward regulating GHGs (greenhouse gases) from mobile sources." Mobile sources would include car emissions, while power plants are stationary sources.

"EPA does not believe existing regulations allow us to establish limitations on CO2 and other GHG emissions" in permits such as the one issued to the Bonanza plant, she added.

Emond said the agency also does not believe the construction permit program can be used to mandate all power plants use a coal gasification process to produce energy.

"EPA believes the environmental and energy security goals of the United States are best served by encouraging the development of all forms of clean coal technology and the development of alternative fuels, while also using existing energy supplies in an environmentally sound way," Emond's e-mail added.

"The Deseret Power Project — by supplying a new source of electricity and using a previously untapped reserve of waste coal as fuel in a plant with modern pollution controls — helps meet these goals."

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