Keeping Our Environment Clean

 

Southwestern Public Service has helped our environment so much. They have worked very hard to keep it clean. They are still working hard. Some equipment they use are a baghouse and a boiler.

SPS's power plants are some of the cleanest in the nation. The most important decision made at SPS was to burn low sulfur western coal. It helped the plants to meet better air quality standards without expensive scrubbers. SPS was the first electrical unit to construct a baghouse. Baghouses cost millions of dollars, and act like giant vacuum cleaners. SPS still stands at the forefront of clean coal technology. CFB uses limestone in the boiler to catch sulfur dioxide without using scrubbers.

SPS is one of the smallest electrical units in the nation without final discharge of waste and water from its power plants. A large coal fueled power plant will produce 185,000 tons a year of fly ash. SPS's baghouses do a great job of collecting fly ash and turning it into fine powdery ash. They use the ash for highways and airports. SPS recycles almost 200,000,000 pounds of scrap metal a year, and they recycle enough aluminum to equal 800,000,000 soft drink cans.

Today many people are very happy about how SPS has changed our environment. We are very lucky to have a clean environment, and we hope that it stays that way.

 


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