No 'regulatory uncertainty' in Kansas

The proposed two new coal-fired power plants near Holcomb have not been the fall campaign issue they were expected to be, thank goodness. But voters should be wary of the plants' mention all the same, especially in the same breath with the term "regulatory uncertainty."

Consider House Speaker Melvin Neufeld, R-Ingalls, telling Harris News Service: "It is clear, and it gets clearer the more I go out and visit with people around the state, how important it is to get this issue resolved of regulatory uncertainty. I mean that clearly, it is just a major impediment of any new development of any consequence in Kansas."

Or state Rep. Ty Masterson, R-Andover, running for the Kansas Senate District 16 seat, telling The Eagle that "this year, the governor clearly shut the door to any business or industry that produces any CO2, which is almost all of them."

Such statements don't reflect reality.

During the nearly six years of the Sebelius administration, 3,131 air-quality permits have been issued as of last week (914 operating permits and 2,217 construction permits) and only one has been denied. More than 570 permits have been issued since last October's single rejection by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment -- for Sunflower Electric Power Corp.' s proposed Holcomb plants, which would have exported 85 percent of the power while leaving Kansas with 100 percent of the carbon dioxide and other pollutants.

How exactly does a single rejection among 3,132 permit requests "shut the door" on all businesses that produce CO2? Or represent a "major impediment of any new development of any consequence" in the state?

It doesn't -- unless you discount, say, Cessna Aircraft's decision to invest $780 million in Wichita and its Citation Columbus business jet, or Spirit AeroSystems' planned $260 million plant in Wichita to build the jet's fuselage. Gov. Kathleen Sebelius will be in town Wednesday to help break ground for the Cessna plant, which has been called the largest construction project in the county's history.

As Kansas Secretary of Health and Environment Rod Bremby repeatedly has said, Kansas is "open for business." If out-of-state businesses believe otherwise, it's because of the untruths that Neufeld, Masterson and others persist in peddling.

Meanwhile, the prospects for financing two 700-megawatt coal plants continue to dim. Even before the credit market slowed nationally, some banks had declared such plants too risky. In the past two years, the estimated costs for a 1,500-megawatt coal plant in Nevada have gone from $3.8 billion to $5 billion. And a President Obama reportedly would tell his Environmental Protection Agency to use the 1990 Clean Air Act to set emissions limits on power plants and manufacturers, as per the U.S. Supreme Court's green light last year. A President McCain might do likewise, given the candidate's stated concern about climate change.

Kansans should press their legislative leaders not to refight last session's coal wars with Sebelius. Instead, the Legislature should join entities such as the Kansas Energy and Environmental Policy advisory group and Kansas Energy Council in planning how to power Kansas cleanly and comprehensively long term.

For the editorial board, Rhonda Holman