Routt County’s future is at a crossroads as the community grapples with the 2028 closure of Hayden Station, a coal-fired power plant that has long been an economic cornerstone for the region. 

At Monday’s work session, Routt County commissioners laid out the stakes and their strategy for negotiating with Xcel Energy, the plant’s owner, and the Colorado Public Utilities Commission over how the transition away from coal should be managed, funded and shaped.

Commissioners Sonja Macys, Angelica Salinas and Tim Redmond met with local media at the work session to explain the county’s April 18 “answer testimony” — a comprehensive response to Xcel’s “Just Transition” solicitation. 

“This is filed as what we call answer testimony, meaning that somebody is interviewed, and there are questions asked, and the responses that are given are intended to frame how we approach Xcel with our perspective on the solicitation itself,” said Macys. “In this case, we nominated Commissioner Redmond to be our representative on this.”

Macys added that the county has been partnering with the town of Hayden, which submitted its own testimony. 

Both testimonies detail the profound economic and social impacts the plant’s closure will have and presents a case for a single unified $89 million settlement for both the county and Hayden. The proposed amount stands in stark contrast to Xcel’s current offer of $16 million over six years.

Redmond pointed out that the request is actually for a smaller amount than the initial request made by neighboring Moffat County and Craig, which went through a similar transition process. The Routt County commissioners argued that Xcel’s offer of six years of support is too short, especially when other communities have received 10 years. 

“If you look at what happened in Moffat County and Pueblo, they were all offered 10 (years),” Redmond said. “It did not seem equitable that we would be offered less.” 

The commissioners’ testimony is rooted in a detailed economic impact study by their hired consultant, Economic and Planning Services Inc., which estimates total economic fallout from the plant’s closure at $310 million. This encompasses direct job losses, indirect effects on local businesses and contractors, and induced impacts as spending by plant workers and their families disappears from the local economy. 

The closure of Hayden Station threatens around 65 jobs directly, many of them among the best-paying jobs in the region, and puts at risk another 186 jobs in the broader community, according to the commissioners’ testimony. The loss of the plant’s property taxes — about $4.3 million annually — would place a substantial burden on local schools, fire protection and medical services, said Redmond. 

Additionally, Hayden School District alone faces a $2.7 million annual shortfall due to the plant’s closure, representing over a quarter of the district’s overall budget, according to the testimony.

Macys said she believes Xcel’s timeline is based on outdated assumptions about the “useful life” of the plant, rather than the real time it takes for a rural community to rebuild its economy after such a loss.

A major question remains regarding what kind of new energy generation or economic activity could replace the plant’s role in the community. While the commissioners support renewable energy, they were frank about the limitations of solar and wind projects and advocated for geothermal energy. 

“The valuation of renewable energy, sadly, is not as high as the valuation of other types of energy. So when you think about deploying solar and wind, you’re going to have less generation … therefore the property tax revenue throw-off is going to be smaller,” said Macys. “And so you’re not really winning on all of the fronts, or even really any of the fronts, necessarily, because you also don’t replace the jobs.”

“We would have no opposition at all to those (other types of renewable energy), and we embrace them, obviously, for internal operations, but we think about geothermal as a future-forward resource,” Macys continued. “There’s so much capacity to replace those jobs, and the generation output would be a whole lot higher, which becomes a little bit tied to the valuation.”

Macys added that Xcel’s workforce transition plan, which includes retraining workers for jobs elsewhere in the company – even in other states – is not a real solution for the community. 

“These are people in our community who have been here for a long time,” she said. “If you’ve been living in Hayden all your life, do you really want to be retrained to go live in Minnesota and be working on a nuclear facility?” 

The commissioners also addressed the broader context of the transition, noting that the impacts will not be limited to West Routt. The closure of the Hayden plant could trigger additional job and revenue losses at the nearby Twentymile Mine, which supplies coal to the station. 

“Eighty to ninety percent of the coal production out of Twentymile Mine is coming to Hayden Station … if that goes away, what becomes of Twentymile coal?” said Redmond, who added that this, in turn, could impact schools, medical facilities and fire districts in South Routt. 

“If this domino tips, it could cause another domino to tip, and we want to make sure that we are taking care of those residents as well,” Redmond said.

Throughout the session, the commissioners stressed the importance of a community-driven process. While negotiations so far have largely taken place in executive sessions due to legal requirements, commissioners clarified that they have made efforts to engage with local stakeholders. 

As negotiations move forward, commissioners said they remain open to direct talks with Xcel but have not yet initiated such discussions. They expressed hope that the process can be resolved within a reasonable timeframe, noting that the commission’s final decision is expected by August. 

Redmond likened the situation to a civil suit, where parties can either let a judge decide or try to work out a solution themselves. 

“We have better odds of working with Xcel to come up with something that’s going to be mutually acceptable to all parties, as opposed to leaving it in the hands of the (Public Utilities Commission), whose charge is to protect the consumers,” he said.

“I am not concerned that we as a community can take care of ourselves,” Redmond said, emphasizing the resilience of Routt County residents. “This has to be a community-driven process, because that’s where we’re going to get the buy-in, and the people of our community know what they want.” 

A public hearing on the filings will be held May 1, providing an opportunity for the public to share their stories and priorities directly with the PUC. The Colorado Office of the Utility Consumer Advocate will hold a meeting April 29 to inform and prepare community members for the May 1 hearing. 

“Now we’ve done our testimony,” said Salinas. “This is the time for the community to give their testimony to the (PUC) in those hearings.”

Editor’s note: A previous version of this article incorrectly wrote that the closure of Hayden Station would affect over 300 direct jobs and another 210 jobs in the community. This was inaccurate; the closure of Hayden Station will impact 65 direct jobs and 186 indirect jobs.