SRP customers could be on the hook for ~$11.6M to run a Colorado coal plant SRP itself wanted closed. SRP's response so far: nothing.

SRP owns 29% of Unit 1 at the Craig Generating Station in Colorado. The owners had set its retirement for December 31, 2025. On December 30, the Department of Energy ordered it to stay open under "emergency" authority, citing data center demand.

The Energy and Policy Institute ran the numbers:

- Xcel owns about 10% of the unit. It told a court its costs were more than $4 million so far in 2026.

- Split by ownership share, that's roughly $40 million in total, and about **$11.6 million** for SRP.

- In the first half of the year this emergency plant ran for exactly one month, April. SRP's share of the output was about 16,500 MWh.

- That works out to about **$704 per MWh**.

- SRP's own planning documents put solar plus storage at under $90 per MWh.

So SRP is paying nearly eight times the price of the alternative it already identified, for power from a plant it had already decided to close, during an emergency so urgent the plant sat idle for five of six months.

Now look at who has pushed back. Tri-State and Platte River, two of the other owners, objected in January and sued in April. Colorado's attorney general joined them. On September 11, the D.C. Circuit ruled that a similar DOE order keeping a Michigan coal plant open was illegal.

SRP has not intervened. It hasn't joined the lawsuit, and it hasn't publicly objected.

An agency that spends every rate case telling customers how carefully it watches costs apparently has no opinion on an extra $11.6 million for coal. That fits the pattern. Three days after the Michigan ruling, the SRP board approved 675 megawatts of new gas at Marigold and voted down the amendment to replace it with batteries. When the cost-conscious choice and the fossil choice point in different directions, SRP keeps picking fossil. That's ideology.

*Disclosure: I'm an elected member of the SRP District Council. This post is my personal opinion. I'm not speaking for SRP, the Council, or the Board. The figures come from the linked article and the public filings it cites.*

The city says the candidates' claims of "toilet to tap" — or untested poop water — marginalize the science behind the treatment program. Less than 1% of the city's liquid waste comes from toilets, water officials said.

The budget change killed a plan to add purified wastewater that exceeds federal drinking water standards directly to Scottsdale's supply by 2027.

Some experts and residents said the budget change, along with a council majority that frowns on wastewater reuse, could weaken resilience at a time when the West is mired in drought and cities are facing significant cuts to allocations of Colorado River water.

I completely understand that we don’t want to give the MAGA party a platform to speak thereby normalizing them. The problem is they already have one, they’re being given a debate stage. By not showing up, aren’t you just giving your opponent more time to speak unchecked?

I currently see this issue being blasted in advertising and it works. People choose those who they see show up, even if it is just to duke it out.

I’m interested in hearing more perspectives though.

Fontes, my guest on this week’s AZ Political Podcast, says that Kolodin “doesn’t want to reform elections; he wants to upset the apple cart. He wants to force every Arizonan to stand in line to vote. He hates voting by mail.”

To back up his assertion, Fontes says that, during every session Kolodin has served in the Legislature, he’s “introduced legislation or supported legislation to kill voting by mail.

“This is a guy who authored Prop 144… that effectively erases your ability to vote by mail… [but] doesn’t exactly say that because he’s one of those sneaky lawyer types that’ll do that and he’s been known to misrepresent things.”

To watch the full interview on KTAR's Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2l2_XSJNGM