By Matt Ward & Meghan Stanworth
Intermountain Power rejects bid to keep coal units open
Intermountain Power continued to dominate headlines in the second half of 2022 in multiple ways.
First and foremost was the beginning of construction at the plant site, which saw construction workers arriving in the area and discussions ongoing about how to mitigate impacts of the massive building project on local government services.
But perhaps the biggest story happened late in the year, when details were made public of a surprise unsolicited buyout offer for all of Intermountain Power Agency’s assets, including its two coal units.
The buyout was made in October by Farmington, New Mexico-based Enchant Energy and partner Fibernet, based in Orem. The companies had earlier in September approached IPA about keeping the power project’s two coal units open past their scheduled 2025 retirement date. The companies’ proposal included a plan to use the coal units as the sole energy supplier to a massive datacenter that would be built adjacent to IPP.
IPA’s board of directors made the offer public when it decided to reject the offer during a Nov. 22 meeting.
A spokesperson for IPA said the companies had gone to state legislators first to see about acquiring the coal units. One important rationale IPA cited for refusing the offer to sell the coal units and other assets was that even entertaining such a bid could violate IPA’s agreement with the federal government that the coal units would be closed on time in order to avoid the costs of coming into compliance with certain environmental regulations.
“In 2014, EPA came up with a new coal ash disposal regulation. The regulation said if you’ve got a disposal unit that is leaching something into the groundwater you have to close and build new disposal facilities,” John Ward, an IPA spokesman, told the Chronicle Progress in November. “But if you commit to close the plant by a certain date, we’ll let you keep using those facilities…that’s the option IPA took. It didn’t make sense to go in there and spend a couple hundred million dollars to build new ash disposal facilities that were only going to be used for four or five years.”
Enchant and Fibernet responded to the rejection through a press release in December.
Fibernet CEO Lane Livingston argued that shutting down IPP’s coal operations could negatively impact up to 4,600 jobs, cost the state $412 million in tax revenue, and “$1.5B in local economic activity will be lost to Millard, Sanpete, Sevier, and Carbon Counties, and the State of Utah.”
He said he hoped IPA and other stakeholders would reengage with the companies to move the idea further along.
“In good faith, we engaged in a series of meetings with IPA management and Board to determine if there was a way to acquire the IPP Coal Facilities, decarbonize it, and utilize the power for a massive data center campus,” Livingston said. “We hope and expect IPA’s Board and management will reengage once they understand our proposal enhances their hydrogen project, provides greater security to all of IPA’s members, and customers, including The Los Angeles Department of Water & Power (LADWP), and will be an economic engine for the region.”
Fibernet estimated that development of a series of datacenters would have a multi-billion dollar impact on local economic development.
Two state senators visiting the area within weeks of the news breaking about the coal units confirmed that discussions at the state level had indeed been taking place.
Both Sen. Derrin Owens, who represents the county’s east side, and Sen. Evan Vickers, who represents the west, said officials were studying ways to keep IPP’s coal units open past 2025, even considering a state takeover of the assets through eminent domain in order to staunch any action by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
But Vickers confirmed that no matter who tries to keep the units operating, whether the state or private enterprise, the price tag will likely be close to $200 million just to satisfy current environmental regulations.
This will be a story worth monitoring in 2023.
Delta teen killed in collision
An Oct. 1, two-car collision claimed the life of a teenage Delta girl.
Oakley Shiner, 17, died due to injuries sustained in the wreck, which occurred at the intersection of Cropper Lane and Lone Tree Road.
The three people involved in the accident were all transported to the hospital. Shiner was transported to a northern trauma unit by helicopter.
She later died from her injuries. She was a passenger in a Mercedes C series car that was driven by a male juvenile.
The Mercedes was found lying upside down alongside a white Volkswagen Passat in a deep irrigation ditch.
After Shiner’s passing was confirmed by her mother, multiple schools from Utah showed their support for her family and hometown. North Sanpete, for example, posted a photo with its student body holding a sign reading, “We love you, Delta.”
Millard High’s FFA program also asked students to wear red to show support and had the kids stand in front of the campus for a picture.
Shortly after the crash, a Millard County prosecutor asked Fourth District Court for permission to conduct a criminal investigation. According to an application that was filed with the court on Oct. 7, authorities asked for permission to prepare subpoenas “necessary to obtain hospital records, including blood toxicology results for the drivers of the vehicles.”
One likely reason the subpoenas went under seal was because of the involvement of the juvenile male.
According to the court records, it was clear authorities believed the Mercedes failed to yield at a stop sign, leading to the collision.
“Deputies determined that the Mercedes failed to yield at a stop sign and was struck in the passenger door by the Volkswagen,” the records said.
The application for a criminal investigation noted that “because all three subjects were transported to hospitals for treatment, blood samples for forensic toxicology were not obtained.”
Also, no impairment assessments could be performed by deputies since both drivers were injured, thus the need to follow up with subpoenas, the records say.
It’s not known whether charges were filed in the case.
County budget woes eased by surprise federal windfall
Millard County employees listened to a county budget workshop meeting on Nov. 25 as commissioners discussed salary increases and inflation adjustment bonuses before the end of the year.
One of last year’s biggest developments was the surprise windfall of federal money through the federal Local Assistance and Tribal Consistency Fund, a $2 billion pot of American Rescue Plan Act money allocated to support public lands counties and Native American Tribes impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The surprise funding was announced locally in October. Millard County was second only to San Juan County in its share of the funds, almost $8 million over two years.
The funds meant the county could potentially survive another two or three years of declining revenues as Intermountain Power worked to replace its 40-year-old, depreciated power generation and transmission assets. Depreciation at IPP and other related factors have witnessed a giant shift in tax burden locally and budget holes requiring tough fiscal measures, including talk of not funding things like recreation throughout the county in order to make up for the shortfall in future budgets.
But with the windfall, instead of cuts, county commissioners approved new spending this year, mostly by boosting public servant salaries, handing out inflation busting bonuses and offering enticements to fill the empty deputy slots at the sheriff’s office.
By the end of 2022, commissioner’s made good on only some of the promises, namely paying out $5,000 bonuses to most employees and raising salaries by 7 percent for most full-time employees—road, landfill and POST-certified sheriff’s employees received hourly increases of way more than 7 percent.
The salary increases did not come with a little heartache, however. One commissioner didn’t think it was wise to spend any of the one-time funds on salaries, which are ongoing expenses. Even county auditor and treasurer officials calculated that the funds would be exhausted within a few years if they were spent on salaries and bonuses.
But one county commissioner, Dean Draper, especially pooh-poohed that notion, suggesting that new revenue growth in the future would more than make up for spending the windfall funds now. He encouraged spending more on salaries and bonuses than he eventually agreed to.
Commissioner Bill Wright urged much more caution and argued that it was irresponsible to spend one-time funds on ongoing expenses. Eventually, Commissioner Evelyn Warnick met both I the middle and agreed to a smaller divvying of the funds for salaries and bonuses.
Both Warnick and Draper left office on that note.
How commissioners will treat the funds next year—the county received $3.9 million in 2022 and will receive that amount again in 2023, with the provision they can be spent on anything but lobbying Congress—remains to be seen.
DOE OKs $504 million loan guarantee for ACES project
A major commitment to Millard County’s development as a future hub of renewable energy enterprises came in April 2022 when the U.S. Department of Energy announced a $504 million loan guarantee to Advanced Clean Energy Storage I, LLC and its green hydrogen storage and production project adjacent to the Intermountain Power Project.
The loan closed in June and was the first in 10 years made to a renewable energy project by the DOE’s Loan Programs Office.
ACES consists of industrial scale green hydrogen production—capable of producing 100 metric tons a day—utilizing renewable-energy powered electrolysis, hence its “green” designation.
Part of the project includes carving out two giant caverns from salt domes sitting 1,000 feet below the surface, which will be used to store as much as 150 gigawatt hours worth of energy each.
IPP is a partner in the project. It will use the green hydrogen as fuel stock when its natural gas and hydrogen powered generation facility comes online in 2025.
Dozens of salt domes similarly situated could usher in a new era of prosperity for Millard County since ostensibly all of them could be developed and utilized for clean energy storage over the next few decades.
Mitsubishi Power Americas, a partner in both ACES development and IPP’s transition project, told elected leaders, both local and at the state level, that it plans to invest billions of dollars in the development of a new green hydrogen hub.
“This joint venture is historic for Mitsubishi Power Americas and the future of global hydrogen deployment,” Bill Newsom, President and CEO of Mitsubishi Power Americas, said at the time of the loan guarantee announcement. “We’re proud to partner with Magnum Development and provide the hydrogen equipment to further advance carbon-free hydrogen as a cornerstone of our future energy supply and help chart the path towards net zero. This project sets the industry gold standard for hydrogen deployment, helping to combat the impacts of climate change and advance human prosperity.”
Election denialism leads to civil lawsuit against county
One of America’s strangest political sideshows made a local appearances in 2022.
It featured an extension of the widespread election denialism that gripped parts of the country after the 2020 presidential election—and led to an attempt to overthrow the results of that election on Jan. 6, 2021, when the U.S. Capitol was stormed by costumed seditionists chanting “hang Mike Pence” and other sundry pleasantries.
Millard County got its own tiny taste of this desperate movement when a couple of “moms” calling themselves “Two Red Pills,” real names Jennifer Orten, of Draper, and Sophie Anderson, of Salt Lake City, sued the county over access to protected, private ballot information.
The women added Millard County to a civil case they also brought against Juab and Utah counties in March.
The women sued after they were denied election information they sought through open records requests to each county. Problem for the plaintiffs was the state’s election code governs the storage and transmission of election records, not the state’s open records law.
Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson’s office took the lead in defending the counties against the records lawsuit, which was eventually tossed by Fourth District Judge Derek Pullan, who sided with Henderson’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit.
At one point during a hearing on Henderson’s motion, the judge seemed astonished that the attorney representing Orten and Anderson suggested the two women had a right to see the private ballot data of thousands of voters simply because they asked to.
“You assert on behalf of two voters the right to see ballot images of every other voter? That’s extraordinary,” the judge said during the hearing.
He also suggested that a “bad actor” with access to such data could make subtle alterations and thereby insert “into the public mind uncertainty about the integrity of the election.”
“This really goes to the heart of the republic,” the judge said.
Though the judge eventually sided with the lieutenant governor, it hasn’t stopped the Two Red Pills from continuing their legal campaign—or their online media campaign for that matter, where they are busy “Exposing Corruption, Revealing Truth, Fighting Evil, Defending Freedom, and Remembering God.”
The two women filed their appeal in September. After asking for an extension late last year, the women were given until Feb. 10 to file their appellant brief with the Utah Court of Appeals.
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