To the editor:

The hostile response of the Sunflower Electric officials, to the commendable action taken by Lawrence city officials to oppose construction of the Holcomb coal-fired electricity plant, shouldn’t surprise anyone. Sunflower’s people want you to believe that the deadly mercury it will spew into our air, water and land, and the 14 million tons of global-warming-causing carbon dioxide the plant would produce, are no big deal and certainly not the business of eastern Kansans. Since carbon dioxide isn’t regulated and mercury emissions are permitted by our lax state laws, Sunflower officials can tell people they aren’t in violation of any regulations with their plant.

Remember DDT? Tobacco? They weren’t regulated either until too many people had been killed or damaged in some way by them. Mercury and carbon dioxide are just like those earlier poisons. And the prevailing winds in Kansas will blow Sunflower’s poisons right at us and others in this part of the state. So it is our business!

Sunflower’s plant will use 8 billion gallons of precious aquifer water a year at a time when that supply is already in danger of being depleted. If central and western Kansas farms and communities begin to suffer or fail because of a lack of water, all Kansans will pay. So it is our business to stop the damage the Sunflower plant will do!

We should all thank Lawrence’s city officials for doing the right thing by opposing the Sunflower plant.

Joe Spease,

Overland Park