Jun. 11--FRUITLAND -- Equipment failures at the Four Corners Power Plant on Tuesday caused the release of an undetermined amount of black ash from the site, a power plant spokesman confirmed.

Particulate ash composed of pulverized coal clouded the air surrounding the Fruitland power plant Tuesday morning after equipment designed to retain the coal unexpectedly shut down, spokesman Nathan Tohtsoni said.

"It's pretty much ground up to a fine powder. When it's released like that, it just shoots out," Tohtsoni said of the ash emission. "It's a very temporary situation and it's quickly resolved."

It was not clear how much coal ash was released into the air, he said.

The 2,000-megawatt coal-fired power plant operated by the Arizona Public Service Company reports its emissions and pollution levels to the federal Environmental Protection Agency office in San Francisco four times each year.

"Everything that comes out of that (smokestack) is monitored, and we do a report to the EPA," the power plant spokesman said.

The particulate ash was emitted from one of the plant's five units. The production unit was taken out of service following the unexpected coal ash emission, Tohtsoni said.

However, it's unclear which of two outages caused the ash plume. Related equipment failures were reported at 5:30 a.m. and 9:50 a.m. Tuesday.

Tohtsoni could not confirm how often similar equipment failures cause excess ash to be released into the surrounding air.

Mike Eisenfeld, of the San Juan Citizen's Alliance, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group, said the pollution is an indication that the equipment utilized at the APS power plant is out of date and requires renovation.

"It's a release that usually should have been controlled," Eisenfeld said. "It's another indication that this sort of facility should be updated with more viable technology."

The power plant unit where the outage occurred has operated since the 1960s, and technology updates since then were limited, Eisenfeld claimed.

"These are sort of indicators of a coal plant that's had better days," he said of the ash.

Environmental scientists at the power plant are investigating the coal ash emission, Tohtsoni said.

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