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Wyoming Supreme Court upholds coal plant permit
The Supreme Court ruling Friday lifts one of the few remaining bureaucratic obstacles before the Basin Electric plant can become fully operational next year.
Basin Electric Power Cooperative - March 9, 2010
Originally published by The Associated Press
Reported by Mead Gruver
The Wyoming Supreme Court has upheld a state air quality permit for a power plant being built at a coal mine north of Gillette.
Construction of the coal-fired Dry Fork Station plant is about 75 percent complete. The Supreme Court ruling Friday lifts one of the few remaining bureaucratic obstacles before the Basin Electric plant can become fully operational next year.
"It will be one of the most environmentally sound plants in the country," Daryl Hill, a spokesman for the Bismarck, N.D.-based utility, said Monday.
The plant's $1.3 billion cost includes $334 million in pollution-control equipment, Hill said. Even so, environmental groups have said the plant isn't going to be fitted with the best available pollution control technology.
The Powder River Basin Resource Council and Sierra Club challenged an air quality permit the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality issued for the plant in 2007.
The groups claimed the power plant could unacceptably degrade air quality the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation in southern Montana, about 60 miles north of the power plant site.
The Wyoming Environmental Quality Council upheld the air permit and the groups appealed to District Court, which certified the case to the Supreme Court. The justices ruled that state regulators granted the permit correctly.
One issue was whether the state could justify a permit for the Dry Fork plant even though worst-case computer modeling showed that the plant's emissions, combined with maximum allowable emissions from power plants much closer to the reservation in Montana, conceivably could cause unacceptably high levels of pollution on the Northern Cheyenne reservation.
The groups argued that a permit couldn't be issued under those circumstances. The state and Basin Electric argued that the Dry Fork plant's contribution to that pollution would be extremely small and granting the permit would be consistent with long-standing department practice and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency interpretation of laws.
The Supreme Court questioned some of the state's methodology but ruled that awarding the permit was proper because the agency had "some discretion."
The justices also ruled that the state correctly applied rules for using best available technology and didn't have to require best technologies for reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
"All we were asking was for DEQ to give these newer, cleaner technologies a chance," Shannon Anderson, a Powder River Basin Resource Council organizer, said in a release. "Coal plants are significant, long-term investments and should be heavily scrutinized at the front end. Otherwise, Wyoming communities will be left with the pollution for decades to come."
Basin Electric generates and transmits electricity serving 2.8 million people in Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming.
Headquarters
1717 East Interstate Avenue
Bismarck, ND 58503-0564 USA
Phone: 701.223.0441
