'This era is over:’ PNM demolishes San Juan Generating Station

FRUITLAND — More than 50 years after its commission, the massive facility that once provided power across New Mexico and even the broader Southwest is almost entirely an enormous pile of rubble.

The Public Service Company of New Mexico demolished the San Juan Generating Station smokestacks, just northwest of Farmington, on Saturday morning.

Dozens of contractors and PNM workers gathered about 1,300 feet from the power plant to watch the demolition. Even more onlookers were clustered farther out to get a chance to see the historic event.

As the sun crept higher in the sky and a light breeze ruffled the bright yellow construction vests workers wore, five-minute and one-minute alarms blared throughout the site. After a countdown from 10 and a contractor shouted “fire in the hole,” smoke billowed from the base of the 400-foot-tall smokestacks, where at least 430 pounds of dynamite had been waiting for weeks.

A deafening and ground-shaking boom quickly followed. The sound echoed through the valley as the stacks slowly fell, like dominoes, one after another, a detonation rate of 25,000 feet per second. Another building once used for dust collection fell along with the stacks.

A few seconds later, smoke, dust and ash completely obscured the former power plant, a blend of white, gray and black colors. It took just minutes for the smoke to blow past the rubble, and within a half hour, the smoke had dissipated from sight.

Only the skeletal infrastructure of a massive building stood — boilers, precipitators and a generator that PNM will tear down later.

Demolition workers cheered after the successful job. Even the wind was in their favor, blowing south to north like the employees had hoped would happen, away from Farmington. Heavy on-and-off rain the night before helped, too, dampening the soil and keeping dirt down.

The full demolition process will continue through the end of 2025, according to PNM.

“There’s no doubt that this era is over,” Mike Eisenfeld, energy and climate program manager for the San Juan Citizens Alliance, told the Journal after the demolition.

His nonprofit for years has pushed for the shutdown of the San Juan Generating Station and a transition to cleaner energy. That’s exactly what he hopes the demolition will present an opportunity for.

He said the space needs to be cleaned up and restored, first and foremost, to move beyond “the legacy of what has transpired out here over the past 50 years.”

Reclamation will continue over the next year or so, according to PNM.

The smokestacks’ demolition wasn’t the first to occur at the northwestern site. Three demolitions had already happened, according to PNM, but the smokestacks were the largest and most visual demolition.

The smokestacks were essentially chimneys, a way to release gas and smoke.

PNM contracted the California-based company Integrated Demolition and Remediation, or IDR, to demolish the plant. IDR had around 100 employees working on the 200-acre site for demolition, including five local employees.

IDR performed the job from east to west to prevent damaging critical infrastructure, like PNM’s substation and transmission infrastructure.

About 90% of the materials from the power plant are set to be recycled, according to PNM. IDR has so far recycled more than 15 million pounds of materials like steel, an IDR manager said.

The history of the plant

The San Juan Generating Station ran for half a century. Its capacity peak was around 850 megawatts, enough to power upward of 150,000 homes in a day.

The first unit was commissioned in 1973, and the next three units came on three years after one another, respectively, with the full plant running by 1982.

But, with environmentally heightened standards, the coal plant wouldn’t run forever. The New Mexico Public Regulation Commission in 2020 gave PNM, the majority owner of the San Juan Generating Station, the OK to abandon the coal plant.

The Energy Transition Act, passed in 2019, updated renewable and carbon-free energy requirements for utilities. The law was designed with the abandonment of the San Juan Generating Station in mind, according to legislative analysts.

It gave utilities — in this case, PNM — financial mechanisms to feasibly move away from coal-fired power plants. The same will apply with the anticipated 2031 closure of the Four Corners Power Plant, also in San Juan County.

The full decommission of the San Juan four-unit, coal-fired power plant had been a long time coming. PNM stopped using units two and three in 2017 and halted the operations of units one and four in 2022.

The ETA didn’t require the demolition of the San Juan Generating Station, though it did ensure avenues for economic recovery. San Juan County is the authority that deemed demolition necessary.

The county passed an ordinance back in 2021 requiring the demolition of the power plant to protect environmental and public health. PNM unsuccessfully opposed the ordinance at the time.

That didn’t stop other government authorities from attempting to keep the plant going.

The city of Farmington was a partial owner of the San Juan Generating Station and sought to keep the plant operating with carbon capture and sequestration, or CCS, by partnering with Enchant Energy. The yearslong effort to get full acquisition from the other four power plant owners cost Farmington about $3 million and eventually failed.

Farmington Mayor Nate Duckett said in a 2022 Facebook video, released when the city stopped pursuing CCS, that it was devastating to lose the major economic and workforce base that the San Juan Generating Station provided.

“For a region already facing economic challenges, we have worked diligently to try to keep this power plant open with new economic opportunities attached with it,” Duckett said. “Unfortunately, profit and the ETA have taken precedence over the livelihoods of real people and real families.”

Jodi Porter, spokesperson for the Governor’s Office, told the Journal on Friday that Michelle Lujan Grisham’s administration “remains steadfast in its commitment to ensuring a just transition that leaves no one behind.”

“We have allocated tens of millions of dollars to support communities affected by this transition,” she said. “Additionally, by partnering with local higher education institutions, we’ve provided free retraining programs, funded by the Opportunity Scholarship, to help workers gain new skills and secure future employment opportunities.”

With the abandonment of the San Juan Generating Station, state agencies doled out a pot of about $20 million in energy transition funds to affected communities and for economic recovery efforts.

About 450 workers lost their jobs with the plant’s abandonment. PNM couldn’t immediately confirm how many employees stayed on with the company, but a spokesperson said some employees retired with the closure of the plant and some went to other areas within PNM.

The company also increased its educational benefits for San Juan Generating Station employees, offering $10,000 instead of the normal $5,000 for them to study at colleges or universities, according to PNM.

PNM owns the land where the generating station stood. What exactly the company plans to do with it remains up in the air. A PNM employee said something will be there in the future, and the utility is still exploring other energy generation options there.

The company would need regulatory approval before setting up a new energy source there. PNM has yet to file any applications for projects on the land with the PRC.

Meanwhile, the San Juan Solar Project, which will have a capacity of 400 MW when fully completed, is already on the power plant land, as the two facilities are geographically connected. The project could start operating later this year.

PNM approved a 20-year power purchase agreement for the solar farm.

The utility has to achieve carbon-free generation by 2045, per the ETA.

Subsequently, PNM has consistently set goals to exceed state-required renewable standards. By next year, investor-owned utilities like PNM have to achieve 40% renewable energy, and PNM expects to hit 51% renewables by 2025.

Once PNM pulls out from the Four Corner Power Plant in 2031, the company will be coal-free.