The article about a permit rejection for a proposed power plant incorrectly identified Bob Eye as a former Kansas state legislator. He is the former general counsel for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.
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Power Plant Rejected Over Carbon Dioxide For First Time
Sunflower Electric Power already operates a coal-fired power plant in Holcomb and had proposed to build two more units.
(By Charlie Riedel -- Associated Press)
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Lee Boughey, a spokesman for Tri-State, said Bremby had disregarded his own staff, which had recommended issuing the permit.
The plants' powerful supporters included the speaker of the state House, Melvin Neufeld, who had earlier gathered the signatures of 46 GOP members, including key committee chairmen, for a letter to Bremby. The letter said, "Without your approval of the permit as proposed by Sunflower, our state and its citizens will lose access to the low-cost energy source and millions in economic development." Thirty-one Republican House members declined to sign the letter.
Neufeld said the plants would bring in new tax revenue, create hundreds of jobs, prompt the expansion of transmission lines that could also be used for wind power and keep energy costs low for Kansans by producing enough power to export to other states.
But the plants had aroused strong opposition, especially in the half-dozen eastern counties from Topeka to Kansas City, which have enough voters to carry statewide elections.
Bob Eye, a former state legislator, said of yesterday's decision: "Is it without precedent? Yes, as far as I know, in this state or any other." But he argued that "CO{-2} . . . is a pollutant, not just because the Sierra Club says it, but because the Supreme Court said it."
Holcomb's previous claim to fame had been the savage murders that Truman Capote described in his book "In Cold Blood." Holcomb was a place, Capote wrote, that stood "on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call 'out there.' "
But Eye argued that wind projects were building a new constituency for renewable energy resources even "out there" among the people who were supposed to be the biggest backers of Sunflower's plans. FPL Group, a Florida power firm with a wind farm in Kansas, said it is making payments to about 30 landowners there.
Sunflower, which already has a smaller coal-fired plant in Holcomb, has portrayed the proposed plants as part of a "bio-energy center" that would include an ethanol plant and an $86 million facility that would use a still-experimental algae process to capture carbon dioxide emissions from the proposed generating units. But one investor in the center had pulled out before yesterday's decision.
Even without yesterday's permit denial, the Holcomb project faced economic challenges. A proposal to build a third new unit there was dropped earlier. Tri-State must also meet a renewable portfolio standard adopted recently by Colorado. (Tri-State supported the measure.) That requires utilities to use renewable energy sources to meet 10 percent of their sales. Because Tri-State's purchases of hydropower do not count, it uses less than 1 percent renewable resources. Two-thirds of its power comes from coal. It is negotiating to acquire some wind power.
