13 months ago
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"Today we call on SWEPCO to immediately stop construction of the John W. Turk power plant,"
At a press conference Wednesday members of the Sierra Club and Audubon Society applauded the decision by the Arkansas Court of Appeals to reverse the Public Service Commission's approval for construction of the coal-fired power plant.
In November of 2007 the three member commission issued the certificate for work at the site of the $1.6 billion project to begin.
Work the Sierra Club says now needs to stop in its tracks
Regional Director of the Arkansas Sierra Club, Glen Hooks says, "Every dollar they spend now is a dollar they will attempt to recover from Arkansas ratepayers even if this plant is ultimately cancelled."
Angela Wisely of Arkansas Audubon continues, "We are excited but certainly not surprised because we felt the evidence, both with economics and policy and the environment were on our side. And it's clear the court of appeals agreed with us on this."
If completed, the John W. Turk plant would burn tons of coal in high temperature furnaces to create steam to drive the generators. It's a process critics say would release 6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year.
The court pointed out that even SWEPCO's own study ranked the Hempstead County site number seven out of the ten initially considered for the coal-fired plant.
Glen Hooks adds, "All across the country they've been rejected, 99 of them in the last few years. This could be number 100. We're going to ask them to stop construction. And I hope that they'll see that this is a bad investment not only for them, but for the people of Arkansas.
SWEPCO could appeal the court decision and ask the state supreme court to consider the matter. Or they could begin the permit process all over, this time with the public service commission following state statutes more closely.
