Posted December 15, 2006
Bernie Woodall, Reuters
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LOS ANGELES, Dec 15 (Reuters) - The top lawmen of eight states from California to Maine warned on Friday that if a coal-fired power plant in rural Kansas is allowed to become one of the biggest in the United States, it will negate their efforts to cut greenhouse gases.
The eight attorney generals, led by New York Governor-elect Eliot Spitzer, affixed signatures to a three-page letter filed Friday with Kansas regulators who would approve construction of the $5 billion expansion of the Holcomb Station.
"Climate change is the single greatest environmental challenge facing the world today," said the filing, a copy of which was provided to Reuters by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.
"Scientists overwhelmingly agree that the global community must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, to well below 1990 levels within a few decades, if we are to stabilize the climate at acceptable levels," the filing states.
The protest from the out-of-state top prosecutors is causing a stir in Kansas, particularly in western Kansas, site of the Holcomb plant, which is only four miles (6.4 km) from the scene of 1959 murders made famous by Truman Capote's book, "In Cold Blood."
"Look, we're a little tiny business keeping the lights on at reasonable rates and we're following every environmental law" said Steve Miller, spokesman for the owner of the Holcomb plant, Sunflower Electric Power Corp.
"We're not a bunch of slouches. I suspect they think we're a bunch of dumb folks in flyover country," said Miller.
The Holcomb Station currently is a relatively small -- 360 megawatts -- power plant in rural western Kansas that serves electric cooperatives of Sunflower.
The expansion would boost its output to 2,460 megawatts, enough to serve about 2 million homes.
Plans call for three new 700-megawatt coal-fired units, two of which will be built and owned by another electric cooperative, Tri-State Generation based in Westminster, Colorado. Those are planned to begin operation in 2012 or 2013.
And Sunflower wants to build a 700-MW unit at Holcomb along with partner Golden Spread Electric Generation of Amarillo, Texas, which would open in 2011.
Tri-State, Sunflower and Golden Spread are wholesalers of power to a total of 66 electric cooperatives in seven states.
The letter said an expanded Holcomb station would increase carbon dioxide emissions by 15.4 million tons a year.
But Miller of Sunflower said the full 2,100-megawatt expansion would emit 14 million tons of CO2 per year, which he said would actually be a net rise of 3 million tons because the three electric wholesalers are now purchasing power generated by older, dirtier power plants than the new units at Holcomb.
IGCC ALTERNATIVE
Holcomb is 1,700 miles from Albany, the capital of New York, but Spitzer has the right if not an obligation to comment, said Marc Violette, attorney general spokesman.
"Carbon dioxide is just going up in the atmosphere. Once it gets above several thousand feet, it's everyone's problem, not just for Kansas," Violette said.
Spitzer, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer and AGs from Wisconsin, Connecticut, Maine, Delaware, Rhode Island and Vermont said Holcomb's developers should consider a new technology plant called integrated coal gasification combined-cycle (IGCC), which promises to cut emissions drastically.
But Sunflower's Miller said the IGCC plants are still in the developing stages, are too costly, and not yet reliable.
The next generation of power plant construction may include IGCC, but the power generation is needed now and Holcomb's plan is the best technology available and affordable, he said.