Fighting Coal Power in Texas One Drop of Water at a Time

How do you get farmers, environmentalists and a handful of rapidly growing cities to agree on a water issue? Propose a thirsty new coal-fired power plant. In Texas – where fossil fuels reign supreme and global warming is often seen as a joke or, at best, an afterthought – anti-coal groups are focusing on water to make the case that Texans cannot afford another water-guzzling coal power plant.

A typical 500 megawatt coal-fired power plant consumes over 500,000 gallons of water per hour – about 12 million gallons per day – when operating at full capacity with a wet-cooling system (the most common type of cooling system for new power plants). In addition, coal power poisons rivers by dumping large quantities of toxic pollutants into our waterways. For instance, in states that include Alabama, Kentucky, North Carolina and Ohio, twenty-one power plants have dumped arsenic into rivers or other waters at concentrations as much as 18 times the federal drinking water standards. High concentrations of toxins including mercury, lead, arsenic and barium have lead to the 2007 EPA finding that people living near certain power plants face a cancer risk 2,000 times higher than federal health standards.

Texas isn’t the first state where coal developers faced resistance over water concerns. Just a couple months ago, a new coal-fired power plant slated for construction in southwest Kansas began to face stiff resistance when it was discovered that the new plant would consume about 3.9 billion gallons of water per year – enough water to meet the annual needs of about 25,000 households.

In the case of Texas, an unlikely alliance between farmers, environmentalists and cities has formed to push back against the new water demands. As an article from the Houston Chronicle explains:

There is a new front in the fight over whether Texas should build more coal-fired power plants — water.

The various water factions - farmers, environmentalists and growing, thirsty cities - have come together as allies against proposed coal plants across the state, with battles now raging from Abilene to Corpus Christi.

Their shared concern: The plants will use too much of an already stressed resource. So the unlikely allies are asking water suppliers to not sell the rights to billions of gallons to the plants, seizing on the notion that, perhaps more than ever, water still shapes destiny.

"Water is where they are most vulnerable," said Ryan Rittenhouse, who works on the watchdog group Public Citizen's anti-coal campaign in Texas. "If (water agencies) don't sell the water, we don't know where else they can get it."

According to the Water-Energy Nexus in Texas report published in 2009 by EDF and the University of Texas at Austin, power plants in Texas already consume 157 billion gallons of water annually – or enough water for more than 3 million Texans. As the Houston Chronicle article explains, even low water-using technologies are a hard sell since they can significantly increase water demands:

An alternative, known as dry cooling, uses fans and heat exchangers, much like a car's radiator, and consumes far less water. Even then, the proposed Tenaska Trailblazer Energy Center, which would be the first coal plant in Texas to use dry cooling, had asked nearby Abilene to sell it up to 2 million gallons of treated wastewater each day.

Abilene's mayor said in June he couldn't support a sale, citing the need to save it for other uses, possibly as drinking water. The decision delighted the power plant's opponents, who had applied political pressure with yard signs and billboards that read: "Water Yes, Tenaska No."

In parched West Texas, "we felt we could influence people by talking more about water than pollution," said Jeff Haseltine, organizer of the group Abilenians Against Tenaska.

"This is a conservative area, and there are not a lot of people who believe in global warming or worry about air pollution," he said. "But they feel strongly about water."

It is unlikely that the challenges at the water-energy nexus will be solved anytime soon. Indeed, they will likely get worse before they get better but there are some strategies that can be adopted to protect water resources from energy development:

The clash is the result of rising demand for both water and energy in Texas. With the state's population expected to double by 2060, there will be more neighborhoods, more businesses, more lights, more air conditioners. Meanwhile, the water supply is projected to decrease by 18 percent because of aquifer depletion and sediment accumulation in reservoirs, according to state forecasts.

The challenge is how to balance new energy demands with the need to preserve a limited resource, said Michael Webber, associate director of the Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy at UT-Austin.

In a report released last year, Webber recommended a framework for integrating water and energy planning in Texas, including requiring a clear demonstration of water availability in the siting of a power plant and providing incentives for cooling options that use less water.

The most water-efficient methods for producing power are not necessarily the most economical, especially at the start, but water shortages could give them a competitive edge, he said in an interview.

"Why would a state with such a scarcity of water even consider coal?" Webber said, adding that abundant natural gas requires far less water to generate power.

While Webber is indeed correct that natural gas requires far less water than coal to generate power – a combined-cycle natural gas plant uses about half as much water as a typical single-cycle coal plant – it is odd that he fails to mention wind and solar. Even if Texans don’t give a damn about reducing greenhouse gas emissions, you think they’d be interested in generating virtually water-free electricity from wind and photovoltaic solar. According to Larry Flowers with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Texas has enough wind resources to save over 100 billion gallons of water by 2030. While fossil fuels such as natural gas will continue to play a role providing base load power, developing wind and solar resources in conjunction can smooth out some of the intermittency issues associated with renewables and put Texas on a path toward a more secure water future.