Great Plains to backs coal plant plan

KANSAS CITY - - A regional utility has backed off a proposal to build twin coal-fired power plants in Missouri and Kansas and now plans just one plant while exploring conservation and wind power, its two top executives said.

Great Plains Energy Inc., parent company of Kansas City Power & Light Co., already operates the coal-fired Iatan plant about 25 miles northwest of Kansas City near Weston.

The companyÂ’s announcement in 2003 that it hoped to build 800-megawatt plants near the Iatan plant on both sides of the Missouri River drew strong protests from hundreds of environmentalists and neighbors of the proposed sites.

Great Plains Chief Executive Officer Michael Chesser and President William Downey said recently that only one, 850-megawatt plant was now "on the table" and that the Missouri site was the preferred location.

"It could well be this is the last coal-fired plant to be built in the region," Chesser said.

Meanwhile, Great Plains also is proposing to speed up the installation of pollution-reducing equipment at the existing Iatan plant and at one in La Cygne, Kan.

The company says the new and retrofitted Iatan plants would produce less pollution than the existing Iatan plant does.

The utilityÂ’s revised plan also contemplates generating electricity from wind.

Downey said the company is looking at sites in northeast Kansas and northwest Missouri for a 200-megawatt wind farm that could provide power to 160,000 homes.

Charles Benjamin, an attorney and lobbyist for the Kansas chapter of the Sierra Club, said he believed Great PlainsÂ’ revised plan was intended to build public support for a new coal-fired plant.

"It shouldnÂ’t be a quid pro quo," Benjamin said. "They ought to upgrade their existing plants so they are less harmful to the environment and to people. They ought to be looking at and promoting wind power, which is the wave of the future, and hold off on a decision on whether they really need to build a new coal-fired plant."

Chesser and Downey said none of the components of the new plan was certain until the company gathered public opinion and submitted it for regulatorsÂ’ review.

"This is a starting point for discussion we would like to put forward," Chesser said.

"We think this is a pretty attractive package," he added.

Shares of Great Plains closed up 45 cents at $30.03 in trading Friday on the New York Stock Exchange.

Great Plains provides electricity to about 490,000 customers in 24 counties of western Missouri and eastern Kansas.

Few coal-fired power plants have been built in recent decades, supplanted by gas-fired plants that are cheaper to build and produce less pollution.

But the Bush administration in 2001 began seeking to increase the number of generating plants that can use the nationÂ’s coal supply and be equipped with new technology that reduces emissions.