Pinal County natural gas expansion plans approved after SRP settlement with nearby community
Salt River Project is able to move forward on a natural gas plant project near Coolidge south of Phoenix now that state officials have approved its amended certificate of environmental compatibility.
The Arizona Corporation Commission approved the amended certificate on June 22 for SRP’s Coolidge Expansion Project, and the amendment came after SRP reached a settlement with members of the Pinal County community of Randolph, where the Coolidge Generating Station is located.
The Coolidge Expansion Project aims to add 575 megawatts to the power grid, enough to power more than 139,000 typical homes at the same time. It will integrate solar, wind and storage resources, some of which have already come online, SRP said.
The nonprofit utility, which provides power to about 1.1 million customers, most of them in the Phoenix metro, said the project is an important component of its plans to reliably meet growing demand for power in Arizona.
“The Coolidge Expansion Project both supports that reliability mission and will enable additional solar, wind and other renewables to be part of our system,” said Bobby Olsen, SRP associate general manager and chief planning, strategy and sustainability executive, in a statement.
Under the settlement, SRP will alter the expansion plans at the plant, in particular by reducing the number of generation units from 16 to 12 and moving them so they will be less visible to the community. SRP said it will limit operational use of the units to 30% capacity.
Under the settlement, SRP also agreed to provide more support for the Randolph community, including providing funding for a community center, for a educational mentoring program and for a community development plan.
Other items in the settlement include adding air quality measures, helping to fund community markers, providing funding for Randolph family educational and recreational activities, doubling funding for scholarship and job training programs for Randolph families, and funding a program to upgrade homes in Randolph.
Those moves follow earlier commitments made by SRP to pay into scholarship and job training programs — each of which were to be funded up to $2 million over 20 years — and to assist the community in accessing federal and state grants and in a nomination for the National Register of Historic Places.
Randolph is a historically Black community first settled by agricultural workers mainly from Oklahoma and Texas in the 1930s, according to multiple media reports. Expansion plans at SRP’s plant there have been halted by the ACC twice before.
“We are grateful to the Randolph community for the opportunity to listen to and address their concerns regarding the Coolidge Expansion Project,” Olsen said in a statement. “SRP looks forward to working with the community to follow through on the commitments we’ve made.”