By Sarah Green
KHI News Service
TOPEKA, March 1
The future of three 700-megawatt coal-fired power generators in Western Kansas is still up in the air, but legislators continue to discuss issues surrounding their proposed construction.
The Kansas Department of Health and Environment continues to review the 650 comments it received during the public comment period at the end of last year. KDHE must approve Sunflower Electric”s permit request to expand their station near Holcomb before construction may begin.
“It has been a rather daunting task, getting through all of the comments that were sent in,” said Joe Blubaugh, KDHE spokesman. The comments ranged in length from brief e-mails to a document that was several hundred pages long, he said.
The department won”t answer each comment but will address each issue separately, Blubaugh said.
Legislators have attempted to weigh in. In January, the House Energy and Utilities Committee held a standing-room only hearing on House Bill 2219, which would have put a moratorium on construction of coal-fired generators in the state. The committee tabled the bill after the hearing.
On Thursday, the committee heard HB 2526, which would establish a network of atmospheric mercury monitoring stations across Kansas regardless if the new plants are built.
Three stations in the state currently sample precipitation for the national network that tracks atmospheric pollution; however, none of those sites collect information about atmospheric mercury. The bill calls for at least six sites to monitor mercury levels, which includes upgrading the three existing sites. Six monitoring sites would cost about $228,000 the first year and $140,000 each year thereafter.
Coal-fired power plants are thought to emit about 40 percent of mercury emissions in the country, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Trace amounts of the element can accumulate in fish that swim in contaminated waters, making the levels higher and potentially more poisonous to humans who eat them. Two rivers
the Little Arkansas in Sedgwick County and the Blue River in Johnson County
now have warnings to limit consumption of fish because of their heightened mercury content.
Mercury can affect human nervous systems and is considered particularly harmful to pregnant women and their fetuses, infants and children, according to the EPA.
The House bill wouldn”t derail or delay the plans to build the new generators. Rep. Tom Hawk, D-Manhattan, a sponsor of the bill, predicted the permit would be approved and the generators built.
He said he was concerned, though, with the lack of measurements of atmospheric mercury in Kansas.
“What one would hope that this would give you is conclusive evidence one way or the other,” of mercury levels, he said. “If it does cause a health problem that the utilities are not anticipating, I want the data so that we are able to make political decisions about what to do about it.”
The Sunflower Electric proposal includes controls on mercury to limit the output of the total plant, which will go from one generating unit to four, if the expansion is approved. The proposal calls for the expanded plant to produce no more mercury pollution than the single existing generator.
The
permit limits emissions to a level 79 percent below the current federal regulations, said Steve Miller, spokesman for Hays-based Sunflower Electric. The new generators would also be subject to the strictest EPA mercury controls to date.
There”s no way to put an estimate on the percentage of atmospheric mercury that comes from in-state emissions, said Tom Gross, chief of the Air Monitoring and Planning section at KDHE, but collecting data will help paint an accurate picture of what”s going on in the atmosphere above Kansas.
Bill Eastman, director of environmental services for Westar Energy, presented neutral testimony on the bill during Thursday”s meeting. Eastman questioned the need for the data, but asked that utilities be included among those who receive the results of the mercury testing.
The House energy committee will likely discuss the bill on Tuesday, said committee chairman Carl Holmes, R-Liberal.
-Sarah Green is a staff writer for KHI News Service, which specializes in coverage of health issues facing Kansans. She can be reached at
sgreen@khi.org
or at 785-233-5443, ext. 118.