The Kansas Coal Power Plant That Just Won't Go Away
Former Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius vetoed Sunflower Electric's bid for a new coal-fired power plant four separate times. She's since moved to higher political climes, but Sunflower Electric Power Corporation hasn't gone anywhere.
It's hung around the capitol like that creepy guy at the corner of the bar who always manages to make eye contact when you stop talking to your friends.
And that creepy guy actually brokered a backroom deal with Kansas's new governor on the block, Mark Parkinson. Now, again, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment will be accepting public comment about this hallmark coal controversy until August 15th, at which point the fate of Kansas skies rests in its hands
The Kansas agency needs to just step away and move on. Sunflower has nothing to offer that we haven't seen before, and now our mike is on.
The shady deals move fast in Kansas. A week after he was promoted from Lieutenant Governor to current Governor, Parkinson met with Sunflower Electric, behind closed doors, and approved a permit for an 895 MW coal plant in Holcomb, Kansas. Which was odd, because he himself wrote an editorial detailing point by point exactly why a new coal plant is plain bad for business.
So what changed? Did Parkinson get all wobbly at the knees when he took the helm in Topeka? Or, was he making a gutsy move? The Sunflower proposal had been clogging business in the Kansas legislature for two whole years before the deal was struck. By pushing it through for consideration by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, Parkinson kicked it out of sessions and into his office; and, most important of all, he opened it up for public comment.
That's no small concession. According to KDHE representative Kristi Pankratz, the last time Sunflower Electric's coal plant was being considered the department received 774 oral and written statements. This new comment period is expected to inspire an even more vocal reaction.
There will be three public hearings around Kansas for citizens to personally debate the merits of a new coal-fired plant. Stephanie Cole of the Sierra Club's Kansas chapter describes these community hearings as "borderline theatrical." She even has enough good will to see Sunflower's pushy tactics as something of a mixed blessing. "People are really interested in the issue," she said.
Even in the first district--an oceanic swath of the state's conservative heartland -- people got behind blocking Sunflower's permit in 2007. Cole credits this debate for opening up a lot of minds to questioning how they get their power, in large part because this current proposal is so obviously against conservative principles of fiscal responsibility and autonomy.
Sunflower Electric still owes millions of dollars to taxpayers for the last coal plant it constructed, and this addition would cost hundreds of millions of dollars more. In a state that prides itself on sense, it doesn't take much to see that old obligations need to be settled before any new ones are considered.
Meanwhile, Kansans would only keep fifteen percent of the power the plant would produce. The rest would go to suburban Colorado, and, under the current arrangement the profits wouldn't even stay in Kansas, because Colorado would technically own the power. The only things Kansans would keep are the pollution, the health costs, and the costs of new EPA regulations next year.
But, finally, Kansans can be sentimental folk, too. It would rub a lot of the state the wrong way if we had to simper and stall until the EPA came riding in to save the day.
Now's the time to kick these black dust merchants back across state lines. No need to get worked up about it. The answer is simple. No. Don't tell that to me. Tell that to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.
Photo Credit: Muzikal203
Ben Proffer
is an environment writer and has written for Sherman’s Travel and New York magazines.
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