Kansas City, Mo. — The Kansas Department of Health and Environment allowed operators of the Sunflower Electric Co. to answer public questions about the coal-fired electric plant that were intended to help shape permit requirements for the facility, according to a newspaper report.
Emails between KDHE and Sunflower showed KDHE, which has promised an impartial review of the permit for the proposed plant, allowed Sunflower to respond to questions from the public, and then passed some of the answers off as its own, according to The Kansas City Star. Those questions and answers were supposed to help shape the plant permit, which will determine emissions releases for the plant.
KDHE said they couldn't comment because of a pending appeal of the permit filed by the Sierra Club, which opposes the plant because of its potential for pollution. In a statement, Hays-based Sunflower also said it could not comment at length because of the ongoing litigation over its $2.8 billion project but that it had done nothing wrong.
The Star reported that during the months the department was writing the 275-page permit, KDHE allowed Sunflower to respond to questions from the public and then passed some of the answers off as their own.
Proponents of the proposed plant near Holcomb in western Kansas say it will bring crucial new jobs to a depressed area. Opponents say the plant will pollute, draw down water reserves and provide electricity that isn't needed in Kansas. Colorado residents will receive much of it.
Construction was blocked in 2007 when Kansas became the first state to deny a building permit because of health concerns about greenhouse gases. But a change in governors led to a 2009 settlement agreement between then-Gov. Mark Parkinson and Sunflower that overrode the greenhouse gases concerns and allowed the permitting process to begin again. In December 2010, KDHE approved the building permit.
Soon after, the Star sought the email exchanges between KDHE staff and Sunflower employees over 18 months.
The newspaper reported Saturday that the emails show the department selected 238 comments that were substantive enough to merit a reply and inclusion in the permit. Sometimes, many people had asked similar questions, and those were grouped as one comment. KDHE gave Sunflower access to the 238 comments, and the company appears to have written responses to almost all of them.
A spot check of 22 Sunflower responses shows that the department took 18 of them, at times almost verbatim, and published them as part of the final permit without acknowledging Sunflower as the author.
Scott Allegrucci, an opponent of the plant who submitted questions that were answered by Sunflower employees, said KDHE's relationship with Sunflower was a "horrific transgression in terms of public trust."
In a statement, Sunflower said it could not comment at length because of the ongoing litigation but that it had done nothing wrong:
"Within the air permit process, all three entities — KDHE, the applicant and the public — have specific roles and responsibilities. Sunflower fulfilled its role and responsibilities accordingly."
Some state legislators said they were not necessarily alarmed by the close relationship.
"Being cozy with business is not necessarily bad," said Rep. Scott Schwab, an Olathe Republican. "Kansas needs to be open for business. We don't have mountains; we don't have oceans. If we don't allow for people to make it easy to make a profit in Kansas, there really is no reason to come here."
Rep. Pat Colloton, a Leawood Republican, said the pattern of responses raises a question of whether (KDHE) fulfilled their responsibility to exercise an independent judgment." But she also said it's possible that the department had somehow researched the Sunflower responses once they were submitted.
Comments
LJWorld.com doesn’t necessarily condone the comments here, nor does it review every post. Read our full policy. Also, read about banned accounts and harassing comments.
QuiviraTrail (anonymous) says…
Well, the EPA now has grounds for order KDHE to re-start the whole public comment process. Who is financing this plant anyway? Sounds way too risky of an investment.
Localeyes (Scott Allegrucci) says…
Perhaps worth noting that all of this activity in Kansas (including political and regulatory corruption, public misinformation, etc.) is likely being funded by Tri-State G&T, the huge CO-based Rural Electric Coop that has pumped a reported $70 million into the Kansas coal plant fight thus far. Also worth noting:
- Tri-State is on record (Fitch Ratings & Forbes Magazine) stating they won't begin construction of the project until 2016 at the earliest;
- Tri-State's recent 20-year resource plan filed with the Colorado Public Utilities Commission clearly shows (a) no need for coal baseload capacity until 2027 at the earliest and (b) no plans for transmission from Holcomb (Sunflower also reports no need for coal baseload capacity);
- The Holcomb Expansion coal unit will be phased for the western grid (CO), not the eastern grid (KS), making the electricity it produces unusable by Kansas utilities unless very expensive phase conversion technology is part of the build;
- Tri-State retains control over all 895MW of the proposed project's capacity - the 200MW presumably reserved for Kansas is a verbal agreement only - there is no obligation under the statute created by the Parkinson settlement agreement to keep any electricity for Kansas. Tri-State is the sole equity and power owner of the project; and
- Tri-State and Sunflower are Class A members of the Western Fuels Association, meaning they have a significant interest in the specific Powder River Basin (WY) coal mines that will supply coal to this project, as well as some short-line rail interests related to coal transport.
Seems like this is a project whose fundamental purpose is to burn coal, rather than produce electricity or jobs, since the electricity isn't needed in the near or mid-term future, and the jobs aren't coming any time prior to 2016, if even then.
Seems also that this is a project that an awful lot of people feel they must lie to the public about, in order to see it done.
kansasplains1 (Lawrence Morgan) says…
Localeyes makes some very important points here. Thank you for making comments that include journalistic responsibility and also further educate the public, including me.
mancityfooty (Corey Williams) says…
"If we don't allow for people to make it easy to make a profit in Kansas, there really is no reason to come here."
-Rep. Scott Schwab, an Olathe Republican
chicago95 (anonymous) replies…
I caught that, too. What an ignorant and fundamentally unpatriotic statement from the majority party.
just_another_bozo_on_this_bus (anonymous) replies…
Clearly a statement of religious faith, from the religion that the only thing important in the world is profits.
acornwebworks (Kendall Simmons) replies…
Rep. Scott Schwab also said "being cozy with business is not necessarily bad". Obviously he has already forgotten the Gulf oil spill, where government regulators were so "cozy" with BP that they allowed BP officials to fill out the regulator's Gulf safety reports in pencil so that the regulators could write over them in pen, then submit them as their own.
Advertising the Kansas government as being "cozy" with business is going to attract the very type of people we do *not* want in Kansas...the cheats, the shyters, the greedy, the corrupt.
Instead of them, why not offer what we *do* have that is good? We can offer a significantly lower cost of living than those ocean and mountain states, hard workers, a great quality of life, friendly people, a sense of community. And no traffic jams!
Hey, I come from Massachusetts. Yes, I still love that part of the country, desperately miss REAL fried clams, and only get to see my beloved Red Sox play a couple of times a year. But I've found I love Kansas. I love the friendliness of the people. The way you can chat with total strangers absolutely anywhere. The smiles. The waves. And the fact you can go months without hearing a single horn being honked. It's a good place to live and raise a family. And I've personally found it's a good place to run a business, too.
The deal is...states shouldn't make important decisions based on what they *think* businesses want. They shouldn't assume that attracting more businesses of any sort will solve their problems. And certain parts of the state shouldn't assume that some temporary one-time construction jobs and a very small number of full time jobs are going to solve their problems, either. (If these communities want a warning example, they should look at the small towns that have been convinced that a private prison is the answer to their prayers...and how most of those have become terrible millstones around their neck.)
Frankly, Kansas should take a much closer look at Texas, whom they apparently want to emulate. It's considered the #1 state for being pro-business. I'm sure that has practically hypnotized some of our elected officials. However, Kansas (with its population of less than 2.9 million people) has a deficit of $492 million while Texas (population of just over 25 million people - almost 9 times greater than Kansas) has a deficit of $27 billion
So...the #1 business-friendly state in the country has 9 times the population of Kansas...and 54 times the deficit of Kansas! Does that *really* sound like something our government leaders should be trying to imitate???
(Oh, as an aside, the Texas legislature decided on a cut of 7.6% for higher education because...gasp...they said that schools could always increase tuition and fees. See yesterday's J-W editorial about this very topic.)
LesBlevins (anonymous) says…
Makes one wonder why the Kansas Department of Health and Environment would collude with a company that intends to build a facility that would obviously be harmful to the health and environment of Kansas when there is an alternative that would be better for the health and environment of both Kansas and the entire region, and would create more permanent jobs in the area where the facility is proposed? So what's a better alternative? The answer is community supported power projects. In other words a "virutal power plant". What is a virtual power plant? It's a number of smaller power plants located closer to the communities they serve and operating at higher efficiency and producing overall cleaner energy and energy that is more locally needed such as electricity and biofuels instead of only electric power.
LesBlevins (anonymous) says…
Is there a better way to make more power? Many experts believe the better answer lies not in increasing the number of centralized power plants that require building or upgrading long-run transmission lines, but in creating “virtual” power plants that quickly adapt to changing energy needs.
A virtual power plant (VPP) is one of the main functions of the smart grid. A VPP matches up a variety of distributed energy systems with intelligent demand response and aggregates those resources into a larger asset that acts like a centralized power plant. VPPs can be deployed on a GW-scale at the utility level by feeding power into the local distribution grids that every town and city already has.
LesBlevins (anonymous) says…
Economists believe that even though the economy will likely keep growing, the decade ahead could be a brutal one for America’s unemployed, and for people with jobs hoping for pay raises. The decade ahead could be a brutal one for America’s unemployed, and for people with jobs hoping for pay raises. We will one day look back and call it the "Terrible Teens". “It will be the mother of all jobless recoveries,” predicts economic historian John Steel Gordon.
On the other hand, it’s possible some technological innovation, such as building the infrastructure needed to repower the nation, could generate a wave of jobs. Yet at the moment, most economists aren’t betting that such breakthroughs will rescue the labor market.
The last time the jobless rate reached double digits, in the early 1980s, it took six years to bring it down to normal levels.
Unemployment hit a post-World War II high of 10.8 percent at the end of 1982 as the country was emerging from a severe recession. Back then it took less than two years for the number of jobs to return to its pre-recession level.