Published: January 13, 2017 |

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Bowie Resource Partners has withdrawn an application with a state agency for approval to build a coal gasification plant at its Bowie #2 coal mine near Paonia.

The action comes just two months after it submitted the application with the Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety. But in that time the agency heard concerns from hundreds of people about the proposal, said it planned to honor requests for a local public hearing, and wrote Bowie seeking answers to numerous questions of its own.

Project engineer Tamme Bishop, with J.E. Stover & Associates in Grand Junction, the firm working as a consultant for Bowie on the proposal, notified DRMS Wednesday of the reversal in plans. In a letter, she asked simply that the agency “withdraw from further consideration” its application for a technical revision to its existing permit.

Bishop didn’t give any reason in the letter for withdrawing the application, or say whether Bowie expected to refile it later. Bishop previously has declined to comment about the project, as has Bowie. The company couldn’t be reached for comment Friday.

Todd Hartman, spokesman for the state Department of Natural Resources, said DRMS hasn’t heard from Bowie about any intent to resubmit the application later.

Kentucky-based Bowie was proposing the first facility of its kind in Colorado. Coal gasification involves producing synthetic natural gas by subjecting coal to heat and pressure rather than burning it directly, the U.S. Department of Energy says. Bowie proposed using coal mine waste as the plant fuel, and its application said the gas produced would be used to generate either electricity or diesel/fuel oil.

Bowie idled coal mining at the site early last year due to the poor market for coal.

As of Dec. 22, DRMS had received 13 requests for it to hold a public hearing on the gasification project, and 416 public comments.

Natasha Leger, interim executive director of the the local group Citizens for a Healthy Community, said about 400 comments were submitted by people via the group’s website, and she thinks public comments and concerns played into Bowie’s decision to withdraw its application, as did the concerns of state regulators.

Groups pushing for a hearing raised concerns that the project would be an industrial hydrocarbon refinery with potential to impact air and water quality, wildlife and local communities. They also argued that the proposal should undergo a full-fledged permit revision, which would require a more rigorous review process than a technical revision.

She said part of her group’s concern was that Bowie was trying to sneak a fairly significant project through under the radar as a routine thing.

“These types of proposals should be vetted through a significant public process. I’m glad that there was a stop to it but if a public hearing was the next step then that would have been fine too,” she said.

Delta County officials have been intrigued by the proposal as a possible form of jobs creation for a region hit hard by the loss of hundreds of coal mining jobs. County administrator Robbie LeValley said Friday the county never heard from Bowie about the proposal, which would require a county review. She said the concerns raised about the proposal were understandable, and while county commissioners remained interested in the project they also wanted to see more details about what was being proposed.

So did DRMS. While it said in a letter to Bowie that the company’s application was complete, it also sought considerably more information about the project. This included such things as:

• evidence that a revised or new emission permit from state air regulators has been issued or applied for;

• information about whether the mine site would require a revised or new state wastewater discharge permit;

• discussion of how ash waste from the gasification process would be stored or disposed of, and whether that waste would require a state permit or approval;

• information to help DRMS address reclamation costs and other reclamation issues.

Hartman said that to his knowledge, Bowie hadn’t applied for permits with any other state agencies in connection with the project.

DRMS also was concerned that Bowie never made clear whether the coal waste it hoped to use in the plant was from its mine or from elsewhere, a distinction that had regulatory implications.

Assuming Bowie had planned to use its own waste, it apparently has enough on hand to power such a plant for decades. Its projections suggested the plant would have used about 131,400 tons of waste a year, and the state estimates that Bowie has stored about 3 million tons of waste in piles since 2009.

Travis Ritchie, an attorney with the Sierra Club, said the situation with the gasification plant has been the latest in a number of unusual twists and turns involving Bowie in recent years. It also proposed and then canceled an initial public stock offering. It unsuccessfully sought approval for a coal export terminal in Oakland in the face of widespread local public opposition, hoping to use some $50 million in public funds from Utah, where it has mining operations, he said.

At a time when coal markets were shrinking it sought to buy mines from Peabody Energy, including the Twentymile Mine in Routt County. But the deal fell through due to Bowie’s apparent inability to finding financing, a factor Peabody said contributed to its decision to file for bankruptcy. Ritchie said Peabody has sued Bowie for failing to pay a $20 million termination fee over that deal.

“Whenever there’s an odd, screwball story with coal mines in the West, it turns out Bowie is behind it,” said Ritchie.

Given Bowie’s numerous setbacks, “it kind of makes you wonder are they thrashing around, trying to come up with some pretty desperate plans to get out of” the situation the company’s in, Ritchie said.

Source: (January 6, 2017) The Daily Sentinel

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