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Power plant project could shift to Colorado
State leaders express concern today over the prospects of losing a four-billion-dollar power plant project to Colorado. Enlarge video
Topeka — Legislative leaders on Wednesday said if the state rejects proposed coal-burning electric plants in western Kansas, developers would move the $4 billion project 50 miles west to Colorado.
"So we would still suffer the environmental impact without any economic benefit," House Majority Leader Ray Merrick, R-Stilwell, said.
But environmentalists said there was no possibility that the proposal to build two 700-megawatt plants near Holcomb would be transferred to Colorado.
"They've had stronger opposition in Colorado" to coal-fired plants, said Craig Volland, a spokesman for the Kansas chapter of the Sierra Club.
The issue came up during a meeting where Senate President Steve Morris, R-Hugoton, led formation of a panel to look into why state regulators haven't yet approved the project sought by Sunflower Electric Power Corp.
"We feel like enough time has elapsed that we should have a decision," Morris said.
Air quality permits for the project are being considered by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.
Supporters of the project - pointing to recent statements by Gov. Kathleen Sebelius criticizing the plants - say they fear KDHE will reject the permits.
Plant supporters say their suspicions have been raised because KDHE has spent nearly 10 months analyzing the permit applications since the end of public hearings and comment on the proposal.
KDHE has defended its review process and said it will have a decision this month.
While Sebelius has recently shifted her position on the project from acceptance to opposition, she has said she exerted no influence on KDHE, which is headed by one of her appointed Cabinet secretaries.
House Speaker Melvin Neufeld, R-Ingalls, didn't seem to buy it.
"I believe if the governor's statement is she is irrelevant in the process, we'll accept that and take control," he said.
Environmentalists oppose the project, saying the plants' emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants would contribute to climate change and health problems. The attorneys general of eight states and the City Commission of Lawrence have officially opposed the plants.
But Morris said the project would boost the Kansas economy and assist development of renewable energy such as wind power through the construction of electric transmission lines.
During a meeting of legislative leaders, Morris said if Kansas rejects the project it may be built right over the Kansas line in Colorado.
Steve Miller, a spokesman for Sunflower Electric, said that is a possibility.
Originally the project - a partnership between Sunflower and Colorado-based Tri-State Generation and Transmission - entailed construction of three 700-megawatt plants. But in April, Tri-State announced it would delay construction of one of the units to pursue natural gas opportunities to serve customers.
"We already lost one plant to Colorado," Miller said. "There will become a point in time if we can't build these plants we would lose our partners."
Miller thanked the legislators for forming a group - the Electric Generation Review Panel - to investigate the permit process.
The six-member group has been allotted four days of meetings to get a status report on Sunflower's permit, examine KDHE's permit process and make recommendations on possible changes to that process.
The panel will include four Republicans and two Democrats, and be appointed by Morris, Neufeld and Democratic leaders in the House and Senate. Neufeld appointed himself and state Rep. Carl Holmes, R-Liberal, who is chairman of the House utilities committee, to serve on the group.
KDHE Secretary Roderick Bremby said he welcomed legislative review of "the complex technical, legal, public health, environmental and public opinion aspects that must be considered while deliberating on a permit application."
But the Sierra Club's Volland said formation of the review panel was "politics."
"They're unhappy about how long the permit process is taking, and in my opinion this is an attempt to display their displeasure to KDHE and the governor," he said.
Comments
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labmonkey (anonymous) says…
Much ignorance is spewed about coal-fired plants these days. Plants have so much pollution control that they don't put much more than water into the air (Unit 1 in LaCygne put tons of sulfur in the air in the 1980's, but after pollution controls were added in the 1990's along with several remodelings, water vapor is pretty much all that comes out the stack now). Coal is one fuel the United States has an abundance of, and if we can keep the environmental standards strict, we should take advantage of it. I doubt a coal plant would create near the pollution as the Tyson Beef plant in Holcombe does.
KsTwister (anonymous) says…
Dirty to mine,dirty to burn,expensive to mine, double the cost of building any coal plant,billions of gallons of water to convert it to steam. This is Western Kansas remember? Water is not abundant in Western Kansas. Some people need to do their research, this is a NO brainer.
Kropotkin (anonymous) says…
Coal generation requires huge amounts of water. The pollution controls allow a huge amount of deadly mercury to escapse.
Sunflower Electric passed out dozens of contributions. This project will be hard to stop because like the Mafia, the "R" House members under Neufeld stay bought.
Colorado has fiercely fought these including at Lamar, west of Syracuse, 30 miles inside the border on Hwy. 50.
mongo55 (anonymous) says…
Kropotkin funny you should mention the Kansas house speaker, investigate the name of the plant super for Jeffery.
oneflewover (anonymous) says…
"Don't put much more than water into the air"
No matter how much pollution control you have, a biproduct of combustion is CO2 and this cannot be eliminated from the process. Remember, C02 is one of the main greenhouse gasses. No way around it period.
snowWI (anonymous) says…
The new coal technology, IGCC, could have the potential to capture CO2 emissions from coal plants, and then pump them into the ground. However, the technology is expensive, and you have to wonder if the CO2 would escape out of the ground anyway. The Holcomb plants would use antiquated dinosaur technology. This would be pulverizzed coal with little chance at reducing CO2 emissions in the future. The special interest groups sicken me. They must be ignorant enough to think coal plants will keep younger people in western Kansas? The facts are that younger people are leaving western Kansas at a very fast rate, and this has been happening for many decades.
tolawdjk (anonymous) says…
Not sure who you are kidding, logrithmic.
That permit is getting issued.
merrill (anonymous) says…
We do not need them in Kansas for their is no shortage of electricity. They may not get built in Colorado due to substantial opposition.
Jobs can be created in the same area with a substantial movement to alternative energy sources. Wind farms could benefit farmers such that oil wells have done. I would rather subsidize
wind and solar any day over coal or nukes which are constantly subsidized.
mongo55 (anonymous) says…
I'd rather not subsidize any wasteful corporation. If they need funds do what any other big business does issue bonds or sell some of their treasury.
tolawdjk (anonymous) says…
No insider info.
Just experience working there before and issuing those types of permits.
I'm sure thier legal is looking at Massachusetts as pertaining specifically mobile sources, which was the scope of the case. It did have broader reaching implications, but the specific case was specifically about mobile sources.
And I think you have to realistically look at what that permit is. Its a Prevention of Significant Deterioriation permit. Underlying regulation is 40CFR52.21. Kansas reg I think is KAR 28-19-300something. Anyway, its specific to protecting the National Ambient Air Quality Standards. Pollutants like CO, NOx, SOx, PM, Ozone (VOC). there is no co2 naaqs standard to "protect" right now. So they would have to pick some entirely arbitraty number out of thin air.
So say they get an arbitrary number to shoot for. That then pushes into a technology review to determine if it is achievable for that process unit. There is no prescribed method to do it, but the generally accepted way to do it is by a top down BACT review where you look at all available control techs, rank them from greatest control to least and then see if they are technically feasible. Right there you are up against a tough standard to approve because you are going to have to look at industry and see if there are other pulverized coal plants out there operating that CO2 control. I'll make it easy on you...there aren't.
Then you look and see if that control technology is economically feasible. Typically this is the value in $/ton that it costs to remove the pollutant factoring in things like capital costs, retrofit costs, operating costs, labor, depreciation... And its not a "set" value. Some pollutants 1,000 per ton might be considered infeasible, others $10,000 per ton might be just fine.
Then there are environmental considerations. Is there viable CO2 sequestration capacity in that area? Do you have migration issues? What about groundwater concerns?
Continued below
tolawdjk (anonymous) says…
Continued from above...
Basically, the odds are incrediblly stacked against any type of CO2 control being applied to this even if they say PSD applies. There aren't any other regulations out there that are written for CO2 control either. Nothing in Part 70, 63, or 61. Nothing in the Stratospheric Ozone rules. Even if there was, KDHE would have to have formally adopted it from the feds or they couldn't enforce it.
You want KDHE to deny this permit. If the company has submitted a proper application and builds in compliance with existing regulation, the only avenue available to KDHE would be to determine that the direct emissions from this plant are damaging to human health. So what level of CO2 emission is damaging to human health? DO you know? I certainly don't. I don't think anyone has a definative answer on what ppm or lb/hr or ton/yr for a given facility is detrimental to human health. So even that avenue is closed to them.
KDHE has a lot of tools available to them to make sure that pollutants emitted from industry in Kansas is not affecting human health and not detrimental to the environment. Arbitraty and capricious denial of a permit because a source is "bad" when "bad" isn't even definable by the people that say its bad isn't one of them.
The Gov would have to step in and deny this permit. And she has said she's not going to do it. Therefore, KDHE really has no other option to it other than issuing the permit.
csgblaw (anonymous) says…
Do any of the posters on here who suggest that a new coal plant would be bad for the western half of the state actually live in the western half of the state? I do live in SEPC Cooperative territory; I have not heard any opposition to issuance of the permits from anywhere in the western half of the state. The only in-state opposition seems to be from citizens from the metropolitan areas of eastern Kansas, who presently pay much less for their electricity than we do out west and do not realize how integral Sunflower Electric is to our economy. Wind generated electricity is even more expensive and would increase the price of electricity out here even further. It seems like the argument du jour for global warming extremists to cite harm to western Kansas. Its almost as if the Sierra Club, et. al. has resorted to changing the merits of their argument simply to try to appeal to those of us that don't impulse purchase their global catastrophy product. This just in...we're still not buying...
hornhunter (anonymous) says…
KsTwister,
It may be true that western Ks. doesn't have water flowing down their river, but it does not mean there is no water. There is a company called Wheatland Electric that has bought thousands of acres of land out there and taken it out of farm production, and they will supply Sunflower with the water needed. Once the land is removed from farm production and put in to industrial use the amount of water they can pump will be drastically reduced. This ground is in the sand hills of western KS. and corn was grown on it. That alone should tell you how big of a waste the water was then.
Colorado, is getting a new power plant, it is being built S.E of Pueblo, so the talk of 'Colorado has fiercely fought these including at Lamar, west of Syracuse, 30 miles inside the border on Hwy. 50.', is just BS.
The Att. Gen. of Wisconsin was one of the eight states that opposed the plants, but their state has 3 power plants being built in it, on the shores of Lake Michigan, can we say hypocrite.
snowWI,
I do not work for Sunflower and you don't work for the KDHE either. Wind is not the best reliable alternative, we will also need these coal fired plants. Power is in short supply all over the Eastern grid at times and the wind doesn't always blow. Sunflower has beed working with GreenFuels on an alge reactor, check this out at www.greenfuelsonline.com
snowWI (anonymous) says…
hornhunter,
These projects are extremely water intensive. It may be true that some of the agricultural land is being taken out of production, but the water issues will always be present in western Kansas considering they have been mining the water resources for so long. I do not support the building of the plants because they are using technology that is already outdated. The next generation of coal plants, IGCC, is already showing good promise of capturing and storing CO2 that is produced from power plants. That technology would be much cleaner than the outdated pulverized plants that are proposed for Holcomb. Most utility companies are implementing energy efficiency programs to slow the growth demand for electricity to more managable levels. Coal plants will always be diry, especially using the old technology. Mercury will also be an issue as well since they can not remove all of the mercury emissions from coal power plants.