One of those coal-fired Texas power plants blamed for producing a haze over southern Oklahoma in past years is being retired.
The 470-MW Gibbons Creek Generating Station located in the northwest of Houston has been in mothball status but will be permanently retired in October according to a notice filed with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.
The generating station is owned by the Texas Municipal Power Agency and was one of several Texas coal-fired generating plants cited in federal reports for causing a haze over the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge several years ago.
In 2014, Oklahoma utilities were forced by federal regulators to lower emissions from their coal-fired power plants or shut them down. But Texas at the time had not fallen under such enforcement of the EPA’s Regional Haze rule. At the time, it was affecting the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge.
Having come online in October 1983, the plant’s contract for supplies to the Texas cities of Bryan, Denton, Garland and Greenville ended in September 2018.
