Ten years and many legal hurdles after it was first proposed, a coal-fired power plant to have been built in Blakely, Ga., is officially dead –  a victim not of years of court battles and permitting challenges, but of a deal between the plant’s owners, New Jersey-based LS Energy, and the Sierra Club and Public Citizen hammered out in Texas to allow another new plant to begin operation after making significant changes to reduce emissions.

Although not a shovelful of earth was ever turned, the Longleaf  Energy Station was the subject of a pitched battle between Georgia environmental organizations including the Sierra Club, Friends of the Chattahoochee and GreenLaw. In 2008, now-retired Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thelma Wyatt Cummings Moore ruled that the plant’s  air quality permit was  had been improperly granted by an administrative law judge because it did not take into account the plant’s carbon-dioxide emissions.

The Georgia Court of Appeals overturned Moore’s order in 2009, and the Supreme Court declined to take up the case. Even so, the plant was still the subject of further litigation at the Superior Court when the deal to drop the project was announced Monday.

Under the terms of the agreement, LS Energy  agreed to scrap plans for Longleaf and the Plum Point 2 coal-fired plant in Arkansas, and to dramatically reduce emission at the Sandy Creek coal plant near Waco, Texas.

Tom “Smitty” Smith, director of Public Citizen for Texas, said the utility agreed to cut mercury emissions at the almost-complete plant by 50 percent, cut particle emissions by 25 percent and provide $400,000 for a local school system to fund a solar-energy production facility.

In return, Public Citizen and the Sierra Club agreed to drop a federal suit challenging the plant, he said.

GreenLaw Executive Director Justine Thompson said Longleaf was the 160^th coal-fired facility to have been canceled since 2005.

Thompson said decision of LS Energy, one of the nation’s largest energy companies, to cancel plans for two coal-burning plants should send a signal to a coalition of Georgia Electric Membership Corporations known as POWER4Georgians currently seeking to build two new coal-fired plants in central and southeast Georgia.

“Coal plant users should take note that Southern Company and LS have both moved away from coal, they see coal as problematic,” Thompson said. “So what makes these small producers know more than the largest energy producers in the country?”

Nathan Hanson, a spokesman for LS Energy, said he was unaware of the agreement and could offer no comment.

Contributor: Greg Land in Environmental law, Fulton courts | subscribe to rss |   share