Public Hearing In San Juan Abandonment Case - Farmington, Monday

SANTA FE, N.M. — The New Mexico Public Regulation Commission (PRC) will hold a Public Comment Hearing on Monday regarding the San Juan Generating Station Abandonment case. The meeting will be held on the campus of San Juan College in Farmington. Chairperson Theresa Becenti-Aguilar will gavel the meeting to order at 4p.m.

The Public Comment Hearing will be held in the Henderson Fine Arts Building, Room 9008 on the San Juan College campus. The street address is 4601 College Blvd., Farmington, New Mexico.

Comments will be limited to three (3) minutes per person.

Written comments will continue to be received by the PRC. Comments can be mailed to the PRC at Post Office Box 1269, Santa Fe, NM 87504. Referencing San Juan Generating Station Abandonment and case numbers will be helpful (19-00018-UT and 19-00195-UT).

Note – this meeting does NOT appear on either the Public Regulation Commission or the Sana Juan College website. Commissioner Becenti-Aguilar’s office ask that you please contact them directly at 505-827-8019 for more information.

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The San Juan Generating Station Abandonment Case is a complicated and emotive case involving five central issues – legal and financial, the environment and employment, and politics. Whilst the court case itself is only centered on the first two issues, public sentiment and concern ranges across all five.

The issue involves the future of the San Juan power generating station. Initially the station had four working coal-fired units, two of which were taken offline in 2017. The other two coal units could potentially go offline in mid-2022 as a follow-on from passage of the state’s Energy Transition Act, which sets renewable energy goals for the state's power providers and offers financing options for them to move away from burning coal. The Energy Transition Act was signed into law by the Governor in 2019.

The San Juan plant is owned by the Public Service Co. of New Mexico, (PNM), the state's biggest electric utility, and last year PNM filed a two-part request with the state – the first was to abandon the plant, and the second was to seek related financing to cover both the abandonment and the potential change-out of the coal-burning units for elements based on natural gas, or renewables, or to utilize the site for power battery storage.

The Public Regulation Commission (PRC) decided to consider those two parts of PNM’s request separately, and the lingering legal question is whether the state’s new law, the Energy Transition Act, applies to the abandonment and financing portions of PNM’s filing, and thus the plant’s future, or not.

With the ongoing future of the plant thus still undecided, the community is faced with difficult choices regarding the impact of the plant on the environment and on local employment opportunities.

Further complicating the picture, the future of the PRC itself remains in the balance as questions regarding the Commission’s structure and oversight abilities are slated for inclusion on the November 2020 ballot.

Monday’s public hearing will be held in the Henderson Fine Arts Building, Room 9008, beginning at 4pm. Please contact Commissioner Becenti-Aguilar’s office at 505-827-8019 for further information.