TOPEKA — The Kansas Supreme Court will hear a challenge by environmental groups to a state permit for a new $1.5 billion coal-fired power plant at Holcomb in southwestern Kansas. The Kansas Sierra Club and Earthjustice is suing the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, saying the agency improperly granted a permit to Sunflower Electric Power Cooperative to build the controversial 895-megawatt plant next to another coal-fired power plant. The proposal has created a long-running political, environmental and legal controversy. The environmental groups say Democratic Gov. Mark Parkinson brokered a deal with the utility in an attempt to end a legislative deadlock with Republicans who supported the proposal, and then fired KDHE secretary Rob Bremby, after he declined to issue a permit, without regard to the damage to air quality and its impact on climate change. Sunflower and its partners say the permit is sound. Most of the power from the new plant would go to Colorado, Texas and New Mexico. Construction has been on hold after a federal judge ordered that an environmental impact study be done.
Tuesday, Aug. 21, 7 a.m.
