Another One Bites the Dust!

Environmentalists chalked up another victory on Monday when investors scrapped plans for the Big Stone II coal plant in South Dakota. MDU Resources group announced that they were not going ahead with their plan for a 500-600 MW coal-fired power plant because they were unable to find an investor to replace the lead developer, which pulled out in September, citing the economy and uncertainty about the cost of climate legislation. The AP reports on the story here, Reuters here, and Minnesota Public Radio here.

The seeds of doubt may have been planted in January, when the Obama EPA intervened to reject the proposed renewal of the (Clean Air Act) Title V operating permit for the power plant already on site, Big Stone I. EPA said that the proposed permit, approved by the South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources, failed to adequately control criteria pollutants as required by the prevention of serious deterioration (PSD) and new source performance standards (NSPS) of the Act. They also said that compliance assurances in the proposed permit were inadequate. (You can read the January 22 EPA letter here.) An acceptable Title V permit ultimately issued in June, and Big Stone II was unaffected. But the intervention sent a strong signal that the Obama Administration intended to scrutinize how state environmental authorities implemented the Clean Air Act. That, along with the passage of Waxman-Markey, was apparently enough to give the lead investor pause. And this week, environmentalists who have been fighting the "coal rush" that started under Bush, something to celebrate. (You can read the reaction of the Sierra Club, which has been fighting the plant before local agencies and in court, here.)