About two years out from almost closing its doors, North Dakota’s largest coal-fired power plant is making a new large investment. Rainbow Energy Center last month expanded a partnership between Utah-based Eco Material Technologies and Coal Creek Station, which Rainbow purchased in 2022. The plant will now be recycling three of its main waste streams. Eco Material has been working with the Underwood-based Coal Creek Station for the past three decades to recycle fly ash. Now, bottom ash and calcium sulfite — two other waste materials from coal combustion — will be treated for future uses.
Rainbow last summer received a $42.5 million loan through North Dakota’s Clean Sustainable Energy Authority — an advisory board to the regulatory Industrial Commission, which is composed of the governor, attorney general and agriculture commissioner. The total project cost will be $85 million, according to the loan application.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency last spring proposed denying an alternative liner for one of Coal Creek Station’s ash ponds due to concerns that it was not sturdy enough to prevent leaks of coal residuals into groundwater. The state Department of Environmental Quality had previously approved the liner, but the EPA began to regulate coal residuals disposals as well in 2015. State officials earlier this year expressed concern that rejection of the alternative liner could shut down the plant for three years because an existing facility would have to be rebuilt.