3/12/2008

By SARAH KESSINGER

Harris News Service

TOPEKA -- Salina resident Abner Perney handed a green slip of paper to legislators as he greeted them Tuesday at the Statehouse.

The message urged them to consider a line in Kansas' state song, "Home on the Range."

"Where the air is so pure, the zephyrs so free, ..."

Perney ended it with his own thoughts: "Let's leave the black hole of coal behind and turn toward the wind and sun of our great state."

Zephyrs, gentle breezes, along with Kansas' big gusts of wind, were the topic du jour for some 250 people who traveled to Topeka on Tuesday from various communities. They asked legislators to take advantage of Kansas' rank of third nationally for its wind resource.

"It's bad economic development policy to be building new coal plants," said Perney, a Salina city commissioner. "Electric power from wind farms puts more money into communities where they're located. We need a band of wind towers from Elkhart to St. Francis."

He and counterparts Tuesday also voiced their objections to a bill that was written and passed this session to enable two new coal-fired power plants to be built for a Kansas utility and two others from Colorado and Texas.

"If we go with coal now, we're never going to make a transfer to a renewable source," said Megan Hughes, a stay-at-home mom from Parsons.

Retiree Gary Bley of McPherson said he worried that Kansas served only as a place for a Colorado utility to build its plant.

"I don't think they could get a coal-fired plant in Colorado," he said. "This is really for Colorado."

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius indicated at an afternoon rally that she'd veto the bill -- once she gets it.

The measure swiftly moved through a largely supportive Legislature this session. But since its passage last week, it hasn't appeared on the governor's desk.

"I can pretty well assure you what's going to happen to it," said Sebelius as the crowd cheered. "I just don't know where it is."

Legislative staffers were expected to turn over the bill once the crowds went home.

At the rally, Sebelius and Lt. Gov. Mark Parkinson said their administration wasn't about to back down from their stance on coal plants' carbon emissions.

"We may have gotten to it a little backwards, but we are engaged," Sebelius said of her administration's denial of a permit for Hays-based Sunflower Electric to build the plants.

The action has spurred legislators to a full-fledged debate over the state's energy future. Intense lobbying by Sunflower and partners has heavily outweighed the advocacy of bill opponents.

"I'm heartened to see you here today," Tom Thompson, lobbyist for the Kansas Chapter of the Sierra Club, told participants early in the day.

Nancy Jackson, executive director of The Land Institute's Climate and Energy Project, said by phone after the gathering that it underscores opposition to the coal plant bill.

"It was directly to say, 'This is not the right bill, this is not the right time,' " she said.

But it also sent another message.

"More fundamentally, the message to the Legislature was that, at this time in history, our choices are clear, and they ought to be going decisively in the direction of clean energy," she said.

'We need everything'

Few legislators appeared for the rally. Elsewhere in the Statehouse, Rep. Jeff Whitham, R-Garden City, said he recently surveyed his constituents, hoping to get their views on the coal plants that would be built a few miles from his district.

Those who sent in replies to his informal mail poll strongly -- 84 percent -- supported the expansion of Sunflower's current power plant, he said. Sixteen percent disagreed.

Another lawmaker from Sunflower Electric's territory, Rep. Dan Johnson, R-Hays, said he backed the plants' construction to make sure his district had power.

"I think at this point we need to have everything that's available to us," he said. "We need wind, we need solar, we need coal, we need gas, we need everything. And if we don't do something we will soon start having brownouts, and "grayouts" and blackouts."

Missing our big chance

Yet another lawmaker, however, said the state's missing an opportunity by failing to focus on wind.

Rep. Josh Svaty, D-Ellsworth, along with state Health and Environment Secretary Rod Bremby, plan to testify in Washington, D.C., before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming Thursday.

"I think it's an opportunity to express some frustration," Svaty said of the Environmental Protection Agency's failure to address CO2 emissions. "We do not have any direction from the federal government."

We'll build it somewhere

Lee Boughey, spokesman for the one of the project's investors, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association of Westminster, Colo., said that his rural electric cooperative needed a "balanced mix of resources" and adding 700 megawatts of coal-fired power from Holcomb was the answer.

However, the company also is preparing a site in eastern Colorado in case the Kansas project isn't built.

Boughey said if the bill's veto is not overridden, the companies will continue to look toward the Kansas Supreme Court, where they have a case challenging the permit decision.

If that case isn't successful, he said, they would still need to build some kind of energy supply for the 44 electric cooperatives that Tri-State serves in western states.

"We'll eventually need to build a generating facility in eastern Colorado," Boughey said. "No decision has been made on the timing, size, fuel or technology for the project."

nSalina Journal reporter Duane Schrag contributed to this story.

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