By John Lyon
Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK — Lawyers for a group challenging the state Public Service Commission’s approval of a new coal-fired power plant in Southwest Arkansas argued Wednesday that the commission improperly affirmed the need for the plant before hearing arguments for and against the project.
Lawyers for Southwestern Electric Power Co. and the state attorney general’s office argued that the commission followed the law in approving SWEPCO’s application to build the plant.
The state Court of Appeals heard oral arguments Wednesday in an appeal by a group of landowners who oppose SWEPCO’s proposed 600-megawatt, $1.6 billion John W. Turk plant in Hempstead County. The PSC voted 2-1 to approve SWEPCO’s application in November 2007 after 17 days of hearings.
Rick Addison, an attorney for the landowners, told the court that several months before the hearings on the permit application began, the commission ruled that SWEPCO had a need to add to its power supply. The landowners were not involved in that proceeding, and the ruling prevented them from making the case during later proceedings that SWEPCO did not need the plant, he said.
“We would submit to the court that we were prejudiced by the inability to determine need,” Addison said.
Addison said that under state law, the regulatory agency was required to consider all the issues in a single proceeding.
Lori Burrows, an attorney with the Public Service Commission, argued the PSC acted in accordance with state law. The question of need belonged on a separate docket because it was merely a question of whether SWEPCO needed more power, not a question of whether SWEPCO needed the Turk plant, she said.
Burrows said there was nothing to prevent the landowners from becoming involved in the docket on need. She acknowledged that no notice of the case was sent to individual landowners in the area, but she said no such notice was required.
SWEPCO attorney Stephen Cuffman told the court the question of need was a separate issue from the question of how to meet that need.
Judge Waymond Brown asked Cuffman if SWEPCO had any idea, at the time it asked for a ruling on need, that it would ask later for permission to build the Turk plant.
“None at all,” Cuffman said.
The court did not immediately issue a ruling.
The Hempstead County Hunting Club, Schultz Family Management Co., Po-Boy Land Co. and Yellow Creek Corp. are the parties appealing the Public Service Commission’s approval of the plant.
Shreveport, La.-based SWEPCO also faces a challenge from environmental groups who are appealing the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality’s decision to grant an air quality permit for the plant.
The plant has also received approval from regulators in Louisiana and Texas, where many of SWEPCO’s customers live.
