KINGMAN - Southern California Edison (SCE) announced Wednesday that it is closing the door on the Mohave Generating Station near Laughlin, Nevada, for good. The company will decommission and start dismantling the plant in the next few months. The generating equipment will be removed and the permits to run the plant will be terminated in 2010.

The plant's transmission switchyard and some related facilities will remain in place. According to a news release, no final plans have been made for the property. However, the company is considering selling the property and building a renewable energy facility.

SCE shut the plant down in December 2005 after 36 years in order to comply with a consent agreement.

The agreement was the conclusion of a 1998 Clean Air Act lawsuit brought against SCE and the other owners of the plant by several environmental groups.

In January 2006 SCE, Peabody Western Coal Company and Black Mesa Pipeline, Inc. asked the U.S. Department of the Interior's Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement to prepare an Environmental Impact Study on the possibility of reopening the Black Mesa coal mine, the coal slurry line that feeds the plant and an alternative source of water for the slurry line. The slurry line runs through the Kingman area.

In June 2006, SCE announced it would not seek to restart the plant. SRP asked the Department of the Interior to continue the study.

In May 2007, SCE decided to discontinue efforts to restart or sell the plant.

Estimates put the cost of restarting the plant around $1 billion. That cost would have included restarting the Black Mesa coal mine, repairs to a coal slurry line that fed the plant and pollution controls for the plant.

The Black Mesa Coal Mine was located on Navajo and Hopi tribal land. The station used millions of gallons of water and tons of coal from tribal land. When the station shut down, hundreds of people were out of work. The tribes also lost royalty dollars from the Black Mesa Coal Mine, which closed soon after the station.

SCE and the other shareholders in the plant were able to reach an agreement with the Flagstaff office of the Sierra Club, the Navajo Nation, Hopi Tribe, Grand Canyon Trust, Black Mesa Trust, Black Mesa Water Coalition, Indigenous Environmental Network and To' Nizhoni Ani in 2007 to use funds from the sale of $50 million worth of air pollution credits from the station to help repair tribal lands and help the tribes economically.

The funds will be held in escrow until the two tribes can develop and start to implement a plan for an alternative energy plant using wind or solar that will create jobs on the reservations. The power can be routed to California and the funds from the sale will go back to the reservations.

It is unknown what will happen to the 16,000 acre-feet of Colorado River Water allotted to the plant.