A group of downtown business leaders is pushing Colorado Springs Utilities to study the possibility of retiring the coal-fired Martin Drake Power Plant in southwest downtown.

The massive facility, whose billowing clouds of steam can often be seen from miles away, is an impediment to economic development and a plan to turn Fountain Creek into an amenity for downtown, longtime businessman Richard Skorman said Wednesday.

“If nothing else, it’s our viewscape and this incredibly beautiful community situated at the foot of Pikes Peak with a power plant cooking its boilers in the middle of the view,” he said. “It has an impact and people wouldn’t know what it was until it was gone.”

Skorman, a leader of the group asking for the study, said the group hopes Utilities will embark on a community conversation before investing more money in the power plant.

The city-owned utility, which must comply with stringent regulatory mandates over coal-burning power plants, has invested $30 million in an emissions-purifying device developed by Colorado Springs-based Neumann Systems Group, Inc. The so-called scrubber, developed by physicist David Neumann, is being tested at Drake, and Utilities plans to invest an additional $90 million in that technology in coming years.

Utilities also plans to spend an additional $15 million in the next five years for new nitrogen oxide controls at Drake, said Bruce McCormick, Utilities’ chief energy services officer.

The utility has agreed to meet with the group again next month and “talk through the assumptions before we go into the modeling of alternatives,” McCormick said.

“This isn’t the first time it’s come up. Every few years, I think someone in the community kind of raises the issue and it’s talked through,” he said.

“In the past, the economics at that time have tended to drive us to say, ‘It’s still important that we have Drake and in that location.’ But things continue to change over time and maybe the direction will be different. We’ll see,” he said.

The first power-generating unit at Drake was built in 1925. The 254-megawatt power plant, which generates about ¼ of Utilities’ energy, has three units that can operate independently.

Skorman said the group wants to find out whether the utility can get by without Drake or obtain power from elsewhere without significant rate increases.

“I think the economic benefit to property values and to future job creation, to tourism, would be much, much bigger than the detriment of having slightly increased rates,” he said.

Mayor Steve Bach said Tuesday that he’d like to know the “cost feasibility” of moving the power plant.

“I’ve asked (City Council President Scott Hente) to effect a hiatus on further improvements to Martin Drake … until we can have a community conversation and better understand: Is that the right thing to do? Is that the only recourse? What are the alternatives?” Bach said. “I think we need to get that on the table.”

Hente had a different recollection of his conversation with the mayor, saying Bach posed a rhetorical question about whether it made sense to continue to invest money in Drake.

“Drake is an extremely reliable plant. It is very cost effective and has the capability to continue to be both of those things for well into the future, so it’s not something that you should get rid of on a whim,” Hente said.

Hente, who also serves as chairman of the Utilities Board, said the utility would probably have to build a new power plant if Drake was decommissioned.

“While I would be the first one to stay that if I was going to design a city from scratch I wouldn’t plant a power plant right in the middle or close to downtown, I would also tell you that now that we’re there, to build another one replace that one with would be very costly,” he said.

McCormick estimated that it would cost between $250 million and $300 million to replace Drake.

“It’s a very complex issue that takes a lot of analysis,” he said about retiring the power plant.

“The utility is not opposed to having that conversation. We want to know what the community values,” he added. “We look a lot at economics and reliable power. That’s always been kind of our mission. But if others want to look at it differently and bring other kinds of values into the conversation, we’re certainly open.”

The Drake Power Plant Photo by THE GAZETTE FILE

Kevin Kreck