Utility delays proposed coal plant in rural Mo.

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- Rising costs and an uncertain regulatory climate have combined to scuttle a proposed coal-fired power plant in rural Missouri.

Although Associated Electric Cooperative Inc. of Springfield has received state approval to build a 780-megawatt coal-fired plant, the co-op's 12-member board voted Friday to delay the project indefinitely, board member Don McQuitty said.

The plant was to be built in Norborne, a Carroll County town of fewer than 800 residents about 60 miles east of Kansas City. The utility doesn't plan to pursue an alternate location, McQuitty said Monday, and the utility will keep the land it had bought for the project.

The project's expected costs have nearly doubled from $1 billion, McQuitty said. Also, the utility anticipates the Democratic majority in Congress to push for carbon dioxide emission controls and tougher federal regulation of greenhouse gases.

"My sense is that we can come back to this project if the technology changes or if we have a decision by Congress," said McQuitty, chief executive officer of N.W. Electric Power Cooperative in Cameron.

The project was intended to provide power to 57 rural electrical co-ops the large utility serves in Missouri and parts of Iowa and Oklahoma. Among the interested buyers was Sunflower Electric Power Corp. of Kansas.

That utility asked a regional power group to approve the purchase of 125 megawatts from the Norborne plant after Kansas' top environmental official rejected an air-quality permit for two plants Sunflower wants to build in southwest Kansas.

The company has appealed the ruling to the state Supreme Court, while lawmakers work to push the project forward.

Local government and civic leaders in northwest Missouri hoped the plant would provide an economic boost while creating hundreds of high-paying jobs in a depressed region. Two Associated Electric officials delivered the news Monday to Carroll County elected leaders.

Carroll County Presiding Commissioner Nelson Heil said the decision was both a surprise and a disappointment.

"Things had been moving along," Heil said.

Environmentalists and local residents opposed to the new plant were elated. Along with new jobs, the plant would have generated 6.8 million tons annually of carbon dioxide.

"I'm still scared because they own a lot of land and it's zoned industrial," said Gerhardt List, a retired chemist with bronchitis who lives 1.5 miles from the plant site. "But I'm especially glad that I won't be breathing that stuff."