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Some power companies have sought refuge in the wilderness. A group of 23 Southwestern utilities, for instance, joined in the early 1960s to build a complex of at least six tremendous coal-fired generating stations in a remote and sparsely populated region near the junction of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado. They hoped that cheap coal in the Four Corners area would make up for the cost of long transmission lines to Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix and other cities.
But the remoteness of the site did not save the companies from attack. Despite some expensive pollution-abatement equipment, the first two plants to go into operation have been spewing some 1,000 tons of noxious gases and soot per day into the once pellucid desert air. The plants also gulp precious water from the already heavily drained Colorado River system, which supplies most of the arid Southwest. In addition, huge machines have been strip mining 25,000 tons of coal per day from the area, gashing open the Hopi and Navajo Indians' sacred Black Mesa plateau in New Mexico. The project thus poses some hard questions: Is it fair to drain the resources of one region to satisfy the demands of faraway cities? Is pollution any more acceptable if it is inflicted on politically powerless minorities? Or on some of America's wide-open spaces?
HOW TO REDUCE POLLUTION. All power pollutes, but not equally. In one recent survey of 129 major electric plants, the Council on Economic Priorities found that most utilities have been slow to install proven antipollution devices even though they are readily available. The main reason, of course, is a concern over higher costs when rates are regulated.
Consider thermal pollution, which occurs when electric plants take water to cool steam-filled condensers and then return it, 10° or 20° hotter. On such little-known battlefields as Calvert Cliffs, Md., Turkey Point, Fla., Palisades, Mich., and Dresden, Ill., environmental and government bodies combined to force the utilities to build some expensive systems (artificial lakes, huge fan towers) to cool their plants' discharges.
Perhaps the most notable fight against the polluting effects of power plants occurred in Minneapolis and St. Paul, where citizens heard that the Northern States Power Co.'s nuclear plant upstream on the Mississippi would leak traces of low-level radioactive wastes into their drinking waters. Thousands of mothers and children marched on the N.S.P. offices, customers sent the utility dimes "for cleaning up," and bumper stickers said, LEUKEMIA is PENNY CHEAP FROM N.S.P. The utility subsequently installed filters and other devices to minimize the hazard. The company also set up a "task force" of 40 private citizens to join in planning for future plant construction.