Colorado Springs Utilities didn’t waste any time when it got the go-ahead to continue to install an emissions control technology at the Martin Drake Power Plant downtown.
The city-owned utility spent nearly $1.3 million on the NeuStream sulfur dioxide scrubber system at Drake days after the Utilities Board decided to move forward with installing the technology despite calls from Mayor Steve Bach for a timeout.
During Thursday’s State of the City luncheon, Bach signaled he’s not giving up.
“I think we should have a community conversation on ownership and on governance and yes, on Martin Drake,” Bach told a crowd of about 750 gathered at the Antlers Hilton downtown.
“I think it should involve all of us, not just City Council,” he said, drawing applause.
In an interview afterward, Bach said the council, which doubles as the Utilities Board, might be hearing from Colorado Springs residents.
“They may find a groundswell of community interest to affect a hiatus,” Bach said. “We’ll see how it works out.”
It’s unclear if the purchases exceed $1.3 million.
On July 31, The Gazette asked the communications office of the billion-dollar-plus enterprise for purchases related to the scrubbers following the board’s July 18 vote.
“Since the vote to move ahead with the Drake scrubbers, we have spent or committed approximately $1.3 million on additional equipment purchases and progress payments on previously ordered equipment,” spokeswoman Natilia Sibert said in an email.
“Including the $1.3 million, to date, we’ve spent about $74 million on Neumann at Drake, to include testing the technology since 2008. Overall we expect the cost to be one third less than conventional scrubber technology,” she said.
The Gazette requested a list of the purchases, and Sibert said Aug. 1 that it would take about a week to gather the information from Neumann Systems Group, which invented the technology and is testing it out at Drake.
Sibert didn’t provide the list until Friday.
When asked whether there had been other related expenses since she provided the information last month, Sibert responded: “What I sent you is what I have at this time. There may be more to share later.”
Isn’t it private industry’s responsibility to do all the testing BEFORE the government dumps crazy amount of money into their boondoggle? If this technology is so great, why is our power plant the only one ANYWHERE to have it (albeit at a much smaller scale than is necessary to comply with codes)
We should have gotten out while we had the chance. Republicans were screaming bloody murder about Solyndra, but here’s an example of exactly the same thing: government dumping money into a small and unproven technology that promises the world but certainly has yet to deliver.
Where are you getting your information? From Dugan and Leigh probably. If you read all the information available, you will see this is not a unproven technology. Read the report from the state, it basically says, this system is superior to any on the market right now. Plus I think part of the agreement with Neumann is the utilities will get a share of the profits, when it goes on the market.If you ckeck, you will find government does a lot of testing with private industry.
“Time out” from being able to reduce emissions in the immediate future? I don’t think so. With the increased regulations, CSU is going to need any help it can get to stay ahead of the game.
Typical Chacon poor factless writing, it does not deserve to be called journalism. The bottomline is Bach does not want to have a community conversation. Hey Chacon why don’t you write about Bach shaking his finger at a citizen in a threatening manner at the townhall meeting in Briargate because he was asked a legitimate question about utilities and could not answer it. So instead he accused the citizen of being a plant or utility employee. Write about that why don’t you? The guy was just a teacher with a legitimate question but because it goes against Bach’s grand power grab plan to reward his developer cronies and gain more power Bach got extremely defensive.
Bottomline here folks is Bach does not want to have a community discussion about anything. As the town hall meeting with one of his cronies, housewife Dougan who has the intelligence capacity of a jelly bean, showed Bach wants it his way only. He wants to gain control over utilities by putting more of his puppets on city council so he, through the city committee mind you, can dictate everything that goes on. He wants to sell utilities to Xcel so we can all pay triple the rates and he can reward his developer cronies with the property that Drake stands on. We must stay vigilant and vote against anyone that Bach endorses or anyone who has connections with Bach, such as the housewife Dougan and Mr. Leigh. Bach cares nothing about this city and does not have the intelligence to do anything for this city. Anything that comes out of his mouth comes from the City Committee. We must vote Bach out and keep his cronie puppets off city council.
I’m glad the Mayor is taking on utilities. Please keep reporting on this Daniel.
I wached the July 23rd council meeting and it was so funny to see the 7 stooges in action. Dougan was given the daunting task to interview the nominees for the Park and Rec Board to put forth the names which she thought was qualified for the postion. Oneof her picks was AlexJones who has no experience. One of the alternate was qualified over Alex Jones.Because of a remake made in the media about Bach the fire and how it was handle made him not a team player so he was out. Not a team player you will not advance the inner circle, expereinced or not.
After watching her rolling her eyes sucking her teeth When Val Snider opposed her selction of Alex Jones it became very personal becasue she had did all the work with no help or input from any of the stooges and she felt none should question her choices .
And that ladies and gentlem is the finest we have as our leaders.
lilithia
Angela Dougan does not have a drop of leader in her. She has accomplished nothing in her own life and has shown to be a puppet of the puppet mayor. It is easy to see when people move only when their strings are pulled and Dougan and Bach clearly are puppets on a string.
No one in this cheap ass town will come up with the money for other energy especially when Drake is paid for and our utility rates are dirt cheap.
If this technology is anything near what it claimed then why has it not been a rush to fund this in the private sector? Just the thoughts of a retired investment banker.
Why is it news when Utilities follows their Board of Directors’ vote to proceed with completing a federally-mandated pollution control project by proceeding? It should only be news if Utilities refused to follow their Board’s direction. A recent Gazette poll showed 80% of those voting supported going forward at Drake.
If the Mayor and his puppets succeed in slowing down the eventual compliance with EPA rules, they will only increase the cost and delay the eventual cleaning up of the air. Who benefits from this start-and-stop? Certainly not ratepayers…also not those of us who breathe.