The state’s dirtiest power plant has generated a lot of battles over the decades, but nothing quite so unusual as the latest dispute, in which the protagonists seem to have switched places.

One of the state’s most prominent spokesmen for environmental action is trying to keep Public Service of New Hampshire from spending a half-billion dollars on pollution controls for the coal-fired Merrimack Station plant in Bow, even as the utility insists it should go ahead.

This upside-down tussle has come about because the cost of the cleanup program has doubled, but it also shows how complicated it is to choose the best “green” path in an era of global warming and financial turmoil.

“At the time the Legislature was persuaded to support this . . . it was probably not a bad price. But now, there are worthy alternatives that need to be questioned before we sign off permanently,” Gary Hirshberg, chairman and president of Stonyfield Yogurt and a lead petitioner in the fight, said Wednesday.

Two other New Hampshire company bosses have also requested the state to re-examine the cleanup plan, as has Trans-Canada Hydro Northeast, a PSNH competitor. “We know that (the cost of) fossil fuels will be back up . . . and we know that we must – now, not later – reduce the trajectory of CO2 emissions to have any hope of avoiding mid-century catastrophe,” Hirshberg said. “It would be reckless not to pause one last time.”

Hirshberg points to the need for developing alternative energy such as the Lempster Mountain wind farm or the solar panels on his Londonderry company; the benefits of paying for energy efficiency; and to studies that say so-called green jobs can be the engine of the region’s future economy.

“Should we be putting all this money into this 20th-century dinosaur?” he asked.

You bet we should, responds PSNH, which needs the pollution controls, called scrubbers, to meet state air-pollution laws. It says the pause would be unnecessary, possibly even illegal, and wants to start work Nov. 3.

“We obviously need that fossil-fueled power,” PSNH spokesman Martin Murray said Wednesday. “Even in our best dreams right now, we would still have to get 75 percent of (New Hampshire’s electricity) from fossil fuels.

“If we can ensure that this particular plant is the cleanest coal plant in New England and still is economic for customers, why shouldn’t we go forward?”

Murray points to alternative energy company Noble Environmental, which wants to build a wind farm in Coos County but has scrapped plans for two New York operations as its finances collapsed; to the need for hundreds of millions of dollars worth of new power lines before North Country biomass power plants can be built; and to New Hampshire’s sheer appetite for electricity.

“You would need more than 1,200 wind turbines to replace a coal plant like this,” Murray said.

By contrast, the soon-to-launch Lempster Mountain, New Hampshire’s first wind farm, has 12 turbines.

Full Story: http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081026/NEWS02/310269943/-1/news01