
Currently, the coal-fired White Bluff Units 1 and 2 and Independence Steam Electric Station (ISES) Units 1 and 2 are not equipped with the necessary controls to achieve Mercury and Air Toxics Standard (MATS) compliance.
That is according to Aug. 26 rebuttal testimony filed at the Arkansas Public Service Commission in a rate case from Kurtis Castleberry, Director of Resource Planning for Entergy Arkansas.
The original deadline for MATS compliance at White Bluff and ISES was April 16, 2015. However, Entergy Arkansas has secured a one-year extension until April 16, 2016, from the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) for these plants.
EAI has committed to ADEQ to install activated carbon injection and calcium bromide injection systems at each of the units at White Bluff and ISES. These controls will be operational during 2015, Castleberry noted.
The amount of the commodities needed, activated carbon and calcium bromide, needed to run these systems for MATS compliance is a function of how much electricity is generated at White Bluff and ISES in the future. Neither the amount nor the price of the commodities that will be needed in the future can be known with sufficient accuracy now to include an adjustment in base rates.
White Bluff and Indepedence are each about 1,800 MW size, with their coal primarily from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming, and they each went commercial in the early to mid 1980s.