A handful of Utah County cities are considering 30-year contracts with a controversial coal-fired power plant.

Lehi City Council members approved the contract this week. City staffer Ed Collins told the council that some California cities, facing environmental pressures, have dropped out of the $2.6 billion, 900-megawatt Intermountain Power Plant Phase III, which would be built next to two existing plants near Delta.

"The city decided to participate in this project because it represents a well priced, reliable base-load resource," Collins said. Base-load power is electricity that can be produced 24 hours a day.

Lehi Mayor Howard Johnson said the city also contracts with renewable energy sources as part of its electric portfolio, including a wind farm in Wyoming and hydropower produced on Jordanelle Dam.

Eagle Mountain Mayor Don Richardson said the plant "is one of the last coal-fired plants in the nation. We thought it was good for the city. It's something we are forward-thinking on, our future needs."

Eagle Mountain, Lehi, Payson, Springville and the South Utah Valley Electric Service District, which serves unincorporated areas in south Utah County as well as Woodland Hills and Elk Ridge, have either already voted to purchase power from the plant, or will vote within the next month.

The entities are all part of the Utah Association of Municipal Power Systems, which has pledged to purchase half of the power produced by the new plant. The plant will have the lowest emissions of any in the West, said UAMPS spokeswoman Jackie Coombs. While some cities have dropped out, others have increased their purchases and the group still expects to purchase half of the plant's output.

Utah County cities that sign contracts with the plant may get more than they bargained for, said Tim Wagner, director of the Sierra Club's Utah Smart Energy Campaign. Congress is now considering several bills that would tax carbon emissions as a way of pressuring industry to reduce greenhouse gases. The tax could force the new power plant to pay $8 a ton or more for each of the 7 million tons of pollution the new plant would emit into the atmosphere.

"A lot of smaller municipalities are not considering the financial risk they are taking on when they invest in the plant," he said, noting there is a new political reality with the Democrats, now in charge of Congress, pledging to take on environmental issues.

In November, the Utah Supreme Court allowed the Utah Chapter of the Sierra Club and the Grand Canyon Trust to appeal the plant's permit, which was granted by the Utah Air Quality Board. The groups say the plant will impact visibility in five national parks as well as add to air pollution along the Wasatch Front. An appeals board will hear the appeal in October.

"This plant will not do anything to improve air quality on the Wasatch Front, and who can you talk to on the Wasatch Front who is not concerned about air qualityfi" said Wagner. "We just went through one of the worst periods for air quality in history and it is only going to get worse. Utah County is only 50 miles downwind."

Many people don't realize that tiny particulates emitted from coal-fired plants as air pollution have a direct link to asthma and cardiovascular disease, said Dr. Gerald H. Ross of Bountiful. A doctor who specialized in environmental medicine after being poisoned by dry cleaning chemicals in drinking water, Ross spoke against the Delta plant at a recent meeting held by Davis County residents demanding Bountiful drop out of the plant.

"Coal-fired plants are some of the largest polluters in the nation," he said, noting the plant will emit sulfur, nitrogen and mercury pollution as well as greenhouse gases.

California has recently passed new restrictions on the sources of municipal power and at least one city has interpreted those laws to mean they must drop out of the Delta plant, Coombs said. Other California cities have interpreted the law differently and are still considering contracts.

If the $2.6 billion being spent on the plant were spent to develop renewable energy in Utah instead, "we'd never have to build another coal-fired plant," Wagner said.

Developing technology to produce the same amount of power more efficiently, conservation, and the development of renewal resources including wind, solar, geothermal and biomass power plants should replace reliance on coal-fired plants, he said.

North County Newspapers reporter Cathy Allred contributed to this report. Caleb Warnock can be reached at 443-3263 or cwarnock@heraldextra.com.

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page A1.