In the past month, National Public Radio has focused on TransAlta and Centralia as an example of the right way to phase out a coal-fired power plant, the last such plant in Washington state.
A reporter and photographer from StateImpact Pennsylvania and Climate Solutions, a collaborative effort to educate Pennsylvanians about climate change, visited Lewis County in March to investigate and report on public radio stations about TransAlta’s decade-long plans to close its last coal-fired power unit by Dec. 31, 2025. Dozens of Pennsylvania coal plants have closed within the past few decades, some with only three months of notice.
“We wanted to see if Centralia’s story could have lessons for Pennsylvania as the energy-rich state sees a decline in coal and pressure builds to contain emissions from all fossil fuel,” the NPR story stated in explaining the visit to Lewis County and Centralia, a city of nearly 19,000 residents.
On April 10, reporter Rachel McDevitt focused on Centralia’s TransAlta plant and its plans to close next year, asking if the Pennsylvania community could learn from the city’s transition. In the article, she described the memorandum the company and Washington state agreed to in 2011 that called for transitioning from burning coal to generate power to reduce the state’s carbon footprint.
“Centralia — about the size of Johnstown, Pennsylvania — has now been cited as a model for how to successfully transition away from coal,” McDevitt wrote.
Under the agreement, TransAlta, once the community’s largest employer with 850 workers, agreed to establish a $55 million Coal Transition Grant Program to give back to the community as it phased out its plant.
Also on April 10, McDevitt featured Onalaska High School teacher Kevin Hoffman’s work to improve the fish hatchery program at Carlisle Lake, using two educational program grants totaling $65,000 from TransAlta’s $55 million Coal Transition Grant Program. The grant money enabled Hoffman to increase the number of rainbow trout raised by students from 1,000 pounds to 7,000 pounds a year, according to the article. They are released into Onalaska’s Carlisle Lake. McDevitt also spoke to others who benefitted from TransAlta grants, including Levi and Sarah Althauser of the Juice Box, who received an $80,000 grant to replace the roof and heating system; and Joe Clark of Twin Transit, which erected an electrolyzer for hydrogen-fueled buses and a charging station for an electric bus with $1.8 million in grant money.
McDevitt’s report also spoke about Fortescue Future Industries of Australia’s controversial proposed hydrogen plant that would employ 45 people but use more than twice as much electricity as all of Lewis County PUD’s existing customers while receiving $600 million in taxpayer dollars. It also quoted Tim Miles, whose business contracts with First Mode, a Seattle-based company developing hydrogen-powered mining equipment.
Among others, the NPR articles quoted former Lewis County Commissioner and Centralia City Councilor Edna Fund; Richard DeBolt, director of the Economic Alliance Lewis County and a former 20th District state representative who worked as TransAlta’s director of external relations; Nancy Hirsh, policy director at the Northwest Energy Coalition who serves on the Renewable Northwest and Centralia Coal Transition boards; Centralia Mayor Kelly Smith Johnston; 20-year machinist Gene Potter; Bonneville Power Administration officials; and Bob Guenther, a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers who was employed at the coal plant for 34 years and worked on ideas to reduce pollution from the plant in the 1990s.
From 2001 to 2009, TransAlta produced 9.85 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, which McDevitt said equated to 2.3 million gas-powered cars driven for a year. The plant produced 10 percent of Washington state’s power in 2011, which had dropped to 3 percent by 2023.
The power plant constructed at Centralia in the 1960s with two coal-fired units, both capable of producing about 700 megawatts, started generating power in 1971 under previous ownership. TransAlta, a Canadian company based in Calgary, Alberta, bought the mine and power plant from Pacific Power and Light in 2000. By 2006, under increasing pressure over emissions, TransAlta closed its coal mine, laying off 600 workers.
Cody Duncan, a TransAlta business developer who grew up in Boistfort and graduated from Adna High School in 2000, recapped the company’s history and outlined its future on Thursday night at the Lewis County AAUW chapter’s meeting at Stillwater Estates in Centralia. After closing the surface mine, TransAlta shipped cleaner-burning coal from Wyoming and Montana to fuel the power plant.
Duncan, who earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Saint Martin’s University, started working at TransAlta as a summer hire in 2001 and worked at the coal mine until he was laid off in 2006. He was rehired in 2007, worked at the mine until 2012, then switched to the power plant.
“I’m thankful to work for a company that’s been able to employ me since I was 20 years old,” he said.
Between 1971 and November 2006, miners extracted 160 million tons of coal from the surface mine at Centralia, all of which was burned by the power plant. It operated around the clock for years.
Under the 2011 memorandum of agreement with the state under Gov. Chris Gregoire to reduce its carbon footprint, TransAlta was required to shut down the first unit by Dec. 31, 2020, and the second by the end of next year, Dec. 31, 2025.
The company set aside the $55 million to distribute in the community through Centralia Coal Transition Grants — $10 million to improve weatherization and energy efficiency, $20 million for economic and community development and to retrain workers, and $25 million for energy technology.
“For some of our employees, the skills they do every day that are priceless to us are hard to transfer in the real world,” Duncan said. “We want to give those employees and their spouses an opportunity to get some training elsewhere and hopefully help them as we come off of coal.”
Duncan spoke about the Skookumchuck Dam, an earthen dam on the Skookumchuck River above the town of Bucoda that stores water for use by the power plant. Realizing it would no longer need as much water during its transition, TransAlta in 2021 created a 28,033-acre-foot water bank to retain rights to the water for the Centralia community after the coal-powered plant fully closes.
“The water bank was formed to protect that water for use in the community for future businesses at TransAlta,” Duncan said. “And potentially downstream it can be used for mitigation for wells.”
The 4-mile-long lake behind the dam, which is as deep as a hundred feet in spots, isn’t open to the public, although employees have gathered there for company picnics.
TransAlta will continue maintaining the dam and the water bank for eternity, Duncan said. The dam is structurally sound and as earthquake-proof as an earthen dam can be, he said. It’s also monitored by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
“We have real-time monitoring,” he said. “We have real-time data that would provide alerts to the city of Bucoda. It is earth, and so there’s always going to be risk within the earthen dam, but we’re very comfortable with it.”
Duncan also spoke about the Skookumchuck Wind Farm, which has 38 Vesta turbines, each capable of generating 3.6 megawatts an hour. However, because the wind isn’t always blowing, Duncan said, operators can count only perhaps a third of the farm’s listed 136.8-megawatt capacity. TransAlta owns 49 percent of the wind farm, which generates electricity for Puget Sound Energy. Because Thurston County bowed out of the project, all the turbines measuring 82 meters in height (269 feet) with a 136-meter rotor diameter (446 feet) are in Lewis County. He said the turbines adjust automatically to harness the wind from whichever direction it’s blowing. Although the turbines do kill bats and birds, Duncan said new technology with radar can shut down a wind turbine when birds are detected in its path.
He also spoke of the reclamation of the property mined for coal. The mine consisted of 12,000 acres, but only 8,600 were mined with the edges remaining untouched as a buffer. Since 1981, workers have planted 1.7 million trees. He said about 20 people work year-round at the mine and another 25 to 50 are hired seasonally in the summer months.
An outline on a map showed the coal mine resembling the shape of a ghost with the power plant sitting in its mouth. Duncan said mining started at the north end in the 1960s and early 1970s and then moved southeast. The pits mined in 2006 are the farthest east. So far, about 3,000 acres have been reclaimed with topsoil returned to the pits, trees and shrubs planted, water retention ponds built, and waterways flowing through the property. Trees — primarily Douglas fir and red alder — must grow for five years in adequate numbers before a bond posted when mining began can be released.
“We have to carry a bond that covers the entire cost of reclamation on the mine,” Duncan said.
Wetlands are maintained so new businesses can use that property to offset any wetlands disturbed during their building construction. Deer, elk and other wildlife populate the reclaimed part of the mine.
“We get hundreds and hundreds of elk this time of year when they want to have their babies because they can come and be safe,” Duncan said.
Today, the plant employs 97 people, and Duncan said reclamation efforts will take another decade or two to complete.
As for the future, the property could be used for industrial development as proposed by the Industrial Park at TransAlta. The company considered building a small solar farm, but the Northwest’s cloudy weather doesn’t lend itself to profitability in solar energy.
“The sun doesn’t shine enough around here,” Duncan said.
The company also has considered nuclear and hydrogen power. A natural gas plant that previously operated at TransAlta shut down when the market dropped out of the natural gas market.
First Mode of Seattle is converting diesel trucks used in mining and putting rechargeable hydrogen batteries in them to cut down on carbon emissions from equipment. The company built a hydrogen-operating engine in its research and development lab and shipped it to South Africa, where it was installed in a truck. He said it’s called the First Mode Proving Grounds.
And a contractor looking toward TransAlta’s future in Centralia proposed a possible Department of Fish and Wildlife preserve and educational center on the reclaimed mine property, although the suggestion generated controversy from people concerned about endangered species moving into local neighborhoods, which could jeopardize the people’s property rights.
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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at memoirs@chaptersoflife.com.
Centralia Coal Transition Grants
So far, TransAlta has distributed $9.5 million of the $10 million set aside for weatherization grants. Recipients include the Lewis County PUD, which received $1.6 million to improve home efficiency with ductless heat pumps and improve energy efficiency at K-12 schools; the Community Action Council of Lewis, Mason and Thurston Counties, $727,433 to provide cost-saving weatherization for low-income families; the historic Fox Theater, $384,000 to replace a 1930 furnace and install an efficient heating and cooling system; Centralia College, $231,843 to install LED lighting on campus and upgrade exterior lighting; Toledo School District, $231,400 to replace boilers at the elementary school; Tenino School District, $181,491 to upgrade reliability of its stadium lighting; and Reliable Enterprises, $84,113 to update its 1993 building with energy-efficient windows, insulated doors, a forced air furnace and LED lighting fixtures.
As for the $20 million set aside for economic and community development grants, $15.9 million has been awarded with $8 million of that going to support displaced workers employed at the plant. When TransAlta shut down the first unit, 65 people lost their jobs. Other recipients include the Centralia Community Foundation, $2 million to prepare students for college or vocational careers; Centralia College, $1.3 million for a new trade center; and New Market Skill Center Foundation, $30,000 for student scholarships.
As for the $25 million set aside for energy technology, $14.3 million has been distributed. Recipients include Centralia College, $189,000 to support construction of a 56-kilowatt solar project for the library; Tenino School District, $175,000 for construction of an 86-kilowatt solar project at the high school; and Twin City Transit, $37,810 for installation of a 40-kilowatt charging station for an electric bus.
“We still have almost $11 million left in that grant fund,” Cody Duncan said.
