FORT MOHAVE — The Mohave County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Monday to reverse a zoning designation for a plot of undeveloped land in Fort Mohave that would have allowed a polluting natural gas “peaker plant” to be built less than half a mile from residents’ homes.The vote marks the end of a yearlong fight against the power plant at that location by senior citizens living in the nearby Sunrise Hills neighborhood. They reached out directly to The Arizona Republic in early January for help voicing their concerns about the project, connecting with others in the community and getting answers about what they believed to be illegal activity by officials involved in an earlier zoning decision.Resident opposition to the facility in this rural, politically conservative northwest corner of Arizona centered on preventing two 65-foot-high turbines from diminishing local air quality, desert views and property values. The project, called the Mohave Energy Park, has since expanded to include up to four turbines of an unspecified height.AdvertisementAdvertisementIndividuals, including one U.S. veteran and retired engineering manager, also told The Republic in February they were worried about operating noise and potential safety hazards related to gas explosions, especially after the local fire department told them it was not prepared for such an event.In interviews with The Republic, physicians and environmentalists added concerns that particulate pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions from the gas turbines — while more efficient and filtered than older models — would exacerbate respiratory health risks and strain the local health care industry while worsening drought and heat issues related to global climate change. These experts supported energy needs being met with cleaner modern alternatives, such as solar generation paired with battery storage.Members of the senior citizen opposition group, who organized under the name “Not in Any Neighborhood” and often wore bright yellow shirts depicting how the 98-megawatt facility might look against their mountainous backdrop to community gatherings and county proceedings, also tried to engage the local Fort Mojave Indian Tribe in protests but did not receive a direct response.In May, after The Republic’s initial story about the controversy published, tribal representatives came out against the project and attended subsequent meetings.AdvertisementAdvertisementReacting to this rising din of opposition, the two utility companies collaboratively pursuing the project — the local Mohave Electric Cooperative, or MEC, and the regional Arizona Electric Power Cooperative, AEPCO — agreed to consider other locations for the project while continuing to plan for construction at the Fort Mohave site.Monday’s vote removes just the one location closest to residents from play.Mohave power plant story, Chapter 1: A solar ban, a gas power plant and the rural retirees firing back at dirty energyA community advocacy success storyConcerned residents listen during the Mohave Energy Park Town Hall on Feb. 12, 2024, at Los Lagos Golf Club in Fort Mohave.In an interview with The Republic on Tuesday following the Monday vote, Mac McKeever, a senior resident of Sunrise Hills and former aerospace engineer who took on organizing neighborhood opposition to the peaker plant at the location near their homes, said he considers this zoning reversal for the Fort Mohave site the end of his fight on the issue.AdvertisementAdvertisement“I can tell you with 99.99% certainty that my political activist career is over,” McKeever said. His wife, Deb, added that, though he showed his competency leading these types of charges over the past 12 months, “it would have to be a really personal issue for him to get involved again.”The McKeevers went to dinner with some neighbors after the vote on Monday night and plan to host a larger Sunrise Hills celebration once everyone returns from holiday travels.It has been a long year for this crew of retired activists who would now like to retire from activism.McKeever and his neighbors first learned of plans for the peaker plant facility following a December 2023 vote to extend a heavy manufacturing zoning designation at the plot they had thought was slated for more housing development. In subsequent months, they focused their objections on what they saw as insufficient prior notification about the vote by the county and a zoning extension process they viewed as illegal.AdvertisementAdvertisementCounty officials told The Republic the paper signs they had posted on small stakes at the rural site, which were not in view of the nearest residents and blew away within a few days, met notification requirements.Officials with the Planning and Zoning Commission, however, admitted to having fallen behind on updating expired zoning designations. This, the residents argued, allowed for the Fort Mohave plot to be renewed as heavy industrial when county protocols dictate that process should have required a new zoning application after the original 2018 heavy manufacturing zoning for a never-built rock crushing facility that expired in 2020, returning the plot to residential with an allowance for solar energy development only.Power plant coverage in brief, part 1: After blocking new solar projects, Mohave County paves way for gas-fired power plantWhen The Republic reached out to the Arizona Attorney General’s Office in March to determine whether the zoning extension was illegally obtained, a representative responded that “our office continues to monitor the situation but we have not made any determinations on the legality.” They did not provide any updates in more recent communications.AdvertisementAdvertisementNevertheless, the residents persisted in demanding the peaker plant be moved farther away from “any neighborhood,” due to health, property value and safety risks they viewed as unacceptable for anyone living nearby. The original site in Fort Mohave closest to homes was labeled “Site A.” An alternative slightly farther away was named “Site B.” The utility companies later identified two additional possibilities, “Sites C and D,” four miles south in Mohave Valley.”Site A” for Mohave Electric Cooperative’s proposed gas-fired peaker plant is shown as a blue cross on a map generated by the EPA’s Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping tool, less than 2,000 feet from the Valley View at Sunrise Hills neighborhood in Fort Mohave.Meanwhile, MEC and AEPCO doubled down on claims that diversifying energy generation with the peaker plant is necessary to ensure affordable and reliable electricity for resident safety in the hot desert region — despite the fact that they do not provide power to the Sunrise Hills neighborhood, which is served by local competitor Unisource.Throughout the spring, MEC ramped up messaging in the local newspaper and on billboards, advertising the facility as necessary to support hospitals and other essential services during the high energy demand of summer months. Some residents saw this as bad-faith and inaccurate “scare tactics” meant to intimidate them into supporting the project.Indeed, a range of experts on Western electricity grid management and clean energy technology told The Republic that this type of facility is not the only or even the best option for affordable, reliable power, though it is the easiest to build and manage. One environmentalist called their peaker project “2008’s answer to the energy problem,” while a longtime Arizona utility expert implied it was the result of lazy planning by utility operators. A renewable energy law professor in Arizona referred to the threats of hospital outages as “totally bogus.”AdvertisementAdvertisementA recent investigation by The Republic revealed that peaker plants may also yield easier profits for utility CEOs, including at cooperatives like MEC and AEPCO that have “not-for-profit” status.Smart use of solar panels and battery storage, some of which already exist at the site in question, would be a healthier option for senior neighbors and the planet, with proper management, the experts said. Solar energy has also surpassed natural gas as an affordable source of electricity generation in recent years, with Texas and California both expanding reliance on solar and wind after widespread gas-powered outages. Natural gas, which is mostly methane, is a powerful greenhouse gas that, when released into the atmosphere through leaks from such facilities and their pipelines, contributes to the acceleration of climate change.The Mohave Solar Energy Array, Feb. 13, 2024, in Fort Mohave.When McKeever and his neighbors launched the fight against MEC’s “Mohave Energy Park” peaker plant project, they began another chapter in Mohave County’s history of NIMBY opposition to various energy projects. In 2023, the Board of Supervisors voted to ban new solar projects on private land, allegedly in response to resident concerns about them dominating desert landscapes.That restriction did not apply to local utilities like MEC, which operates commercial solar and battery infrastructure near the proposed peaker plant site in Fort Mohave and has received federal grants from the Biden administration to expand similar clean energy investments. Many Sunrise Hills residents have said they would be fine with additional solar panels near their homes and would prefer that over a polluting facility or wind turbines blocking their views. Mostly, they just wanted to be heard.AdvertisementAdvertisementEmail records obtained and published by The Republic in June, however, revealed a level of collaboration to promote the gas project between MEC and Mohave County Supervisor Hildy Angius and her dismissal of resident concerns about the facility that angered many of her constituents and galvanized the fight against the facility in both Fort Mohave and Mohave Valley.Mohave power plant story, Chapter 2: In sunny Arizona, a relocated gas plant ignites questions over who profits and who paysThe momentum of community outrage over potentially illegal zoning, deceptive advertising and political collusion inspired plans by yellow-shirt-clad activists to make their voices heard at meetings of their elected officials. But month after month throughout the latter half of 2024, the vote on the zoning reversal was delayed.Then on Monday, two days before Christmas, community activists, utility CEOs and elected officials came together to remove Site A from consideration for the peaker plant. Tyler Carlson, CEO of MEC, and Patrick Ledger, CEO of AEPCO, both stated support for dropping the Fort Mohave location. Half a dozen Mohave County residents also spoke before county supervisors at the meeting, including Mac McKeever and Kelly Refuem, whose house in Sunrise Hills is closest to Site A and who has also been engaged in this fight for nearly a year.Kelly (left) and Linda Refuem return to their Valley View at Sunrise Hills home, Feb. 12, 2024, in Fort Mohave. The Refuems are the closest residents to the proposed Mohave Energy Park.AdvertisementAdvertisementFor others, the fight against a fossil fuel plant continuesWhile Monday’s vote marks the end of McKeever’s political activism and the risk of a polluting facility near his home, for the residents of Mohave Valley four miles to the south, the fight continues.MEC and AEPCO still plan to build between two and four 49-megawatt peaking turbines in Mohave County, now mostly likely at Site D in Mohave Valley. That location is just over a mile from the nearest residence, in a lower-income, more sparsely populated agricultural area.Mohave Valley residents Kris Schoppers and Kim Qualey, with help from Pastor Roy Hagemyer, have led the opposition to the peaker plant at Sites C and D, for similar reasons as the Fort Mohave community. But as a farming community more affected by recent drought and groundwater pumping restrictions, their objections include a larger focus on its water use, which could add up to 36 million gallons annually if four turbines are installed.Kim Qualey leans on the steering wheel of her ATV in Mohave Valley on May 3, 2024, while touring the proposed site where the Arizona Electric Power Cooperative wants to build a gas-fired peaker plant less than a mile from her home.In response to a request for comment about Monday’s vote to remove the Fort Mohave site from consideration, which places more pressure on the Mohave Valley site as the likely next spot for the facility, Qualey told The Republic on Wednesday she was frustrated that “it’s OK for any other city or town to bring up water resource issues, but if Mohave Valley expresses concern about water being an issue, it gets ignored.”AdvertisementAdvertisementQualey also brought up her distrust of MEC, which provides her neighborhood with electricity, and of Angius, the supervisor, based on her overly friendly emails with MEC brought to light by The Republic, in which she complained about questions from Fort Mohave residents about the peaker plant making her feel “pissed off.”Power plant coverage in brief, part 2: A relocated gas power plant in Mohave County fuels further unrest, financial suspicionThe Fort Mojave Indian Tribe has been more vocal against the project being located in Mohave Valley, since the tribe owns land less than 800 feet away where it hopes to build housing in the future. In May, Ashley Hemmers, who manages public services on the reservation for the tribe, told The Republic she was not aware of any attempts by MEC or AEPCO to consult with the tribe about potential impacts of the peaker plant project. The utilities say they have reached out, but Hemmers feels the tribe’s interests were not sufficiently considered.“They put billboards up because they think they can just buy land and tell us what to think and we’ll put up with it,” she said.McKeever thinks that MEC and AEPCO are likely to succeed in building the gas-fired peaker facility at Site D in Mohave Valley. In part, he said this would be the result of that community being less organized in their opposition.Schoppers, who works full time as a real estate agent and has said she struggles to keep up with organizing efforts, asked McKeever for help coordinating the Mohave Valley protest efforts. After attending a few of their meetings and finding them too unfocused, he declined to be involved. Qualey told The Republic she found McKeever’s interactions with the utility CEOs at recent meetings to be overly cooperative.Read our climate series: The latest from Joan Meiners at azcentral on climate changeBut McKeever said he and his neighbors just feel Site D is an acceptable compromise as a location for the gas plant.“I think this is a great place for it personally,” McKeever said. “From where it was going to be near our house, it would have sounded like a small generator in our backyard. At this (further) distance at the new site in Mohave Valley, they won’t hear it or see it at all from the closest house.”At the close of a yearlong fight over a new $85 million gas power plant at Site A, this week’s zoning reversal is a win for the senior community of Sunrise Hills, a new chapter in the challenge for the agricultural residents of Mohave Valley and a successful speed bump in the slowing of Arizona’s fossil fuel reliance in the fight against climate change.This report was made possible in part by a grant from the Fund for Environmental Journalism of the Society of Environmental Journalists.Joan Meiners is the climate news and storytelling reporter at The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com. Her work has also appeared in Discover Magazine, National Geographic, ProPublica and the Washington Post Magazine. Before becoming a journalist, she completed a doctorate in ecology. Follow Joan on Twitter at @beecycles or email her at joan.meiners@arizonarepublic.com. Sign up for AZ Climate, The Republic’s weekly climate and environment newsletter. Read more of the team’s coverage at environment.azcentral.com. Support climate coverage and local journalism by subscribing to azcentral.com.This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Mohave County reverses decision on power plant site near homes
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