Power utilities companies in Kansas are warning of Armageddon in 2012, saying Kansans will face rolling blackouts, millions in lost productivity, staggeringly high power bills and even complete outages in the summer months due to Evil Job-Killing EPA Pollution Regulations(tm). These brave souls are suing the EPA in a DC appeals court to…umm, what do you mean that’s all compete garbage?
Kansas utilities say that the rules have come so quickly and are so stringent that they won’t be able to comply in time. As a result, thousands of Kansans will experience rolling blackouts or brownouts, which will also cost jobs when the plants shut down. In addition, customers will face higher utility bills to pay for more than $100 million in new pollution control expenses and other costs.
“The adverse effects from such reductions caused by the 2012 emission limits are dire, concrete, substantial and imminent,” attorneys for Kansas utilities told a federal appeals court.
EPA says that’s nonsense. The costs will be far less — between $5 million and $30 million — and Kansas utilities will have more than a year to implement the emission controls.
“Kansas has failed to show that the lights will go out in Kansas,” attorneys for the EPA wrote.
In fact, the EPA says the benefits of the transport rule — prevention of 83 to 210 deaths annually in Kansas and a savings of $700 million to $1.7 billion annually in health care — far outweigh the utilities’ costs.
So these regulations would actually save Kansas taxpayers in the neighborhood of a billion dollars a year or so. You would think Kansas would go “Hey, this is a pretty great deal for us. Let’s help you guys with the costs of reducing your emissions. Here’s some money. Make this happen.”
You of course would be completely wrong, because Republicans are involved. They’d rather spend the money on suing the EPA.
The utilities and the Kansas attorney general joined a handful of states and several dozen utilities in filing lawsuits in the U.S. District Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., asking for a stay and further review of the rule.
The disagreement between Kansas, the utilities and EPA is so contentious that the two sides can’t even agree when the new rules were known and when they go into effect.
They say the EPA is only giving them until January to comply.
“No one expected that,” said Greg Greenwood, senior vice president of strategy for Westar.
They said the new rules would force them to shut down coal plants in midsummer.
“Unfortunately the new … requirements will substantially cost our members and those they serve,” said Cindy Hertel, a Sunflower spokeswoman. “Sunflower estimates that installing upgraded emission technology … will now cost our members nearly $21 million, and we expect to face additional costs” to meet the requirements.
Nope, we have to pass the costs on to the consumers! It’ll cost a hundred million and Kansas will become an electricity-free third world hellhole this summer! YOU AND YOUR LOVED ONES WILL SUFFER!
Look, even if the utilities are completely right on the $100 million figure, and the yearly health care cost savings are overestimated by a factor of ten and Kansas Republicans immediately passed a law that gave all the cost savings to the utilities until they had these new standards paid for as the ultimate in corporate welfare…that still means Kansas would be able to pay the utilities to cover their costs in just two years and Kansas taxpayers would save the difference every year after. Deficit reduction? Not for these guys.
It’s insanity, but the Republicans in Kansas are too busy serving the utilities to serve Kansas.
FlipYrWhig
It’s almost as if there’s something the matter with that state.
burnspbesq
“the Republicans in Kansas are too busy serving the utilities to serve Kansas.”
To the Republicans, serving the utilities is serving Kansas.
amk
Well kansans, enjoy your ‘vote’.
Punchy
I live in KS, and this feud has been going on forever. It’s mind-boggling to imagine (or maybe not), but Kansans in the cities where these beheamoths are going are gung-ho for these dirty, polluting plants. Wanna know why? Because…..you guessed it….libbrulz are against them! Therefore Good RedState Kansans(TM) must be for it!
It a politically-based reverse NIMBY sitchy.
Dork
Should that be called “IMBY”?
burnspbesq
If the law of utility rate regulation in Kansas is similar to what it is in most other states, all of the cost of complying with these new EPA rules will be passed on to consumers.
scav
Wait, are you telling me Kansas shouldn’t be depressing and entirely in B&W? Isn’t that what the repubs are fighting to preserve? Color and Breathable Air are for those Munchkinny people in SanFranCisCo with their Legislative Witches whereas Coal Dust and Other Pollutants are what brings everybody back home to the Farm!
4tehlulz
S&P strikes again.
c u n d gulag
This!
This is the matter with Kansas.
Stupid shit like this.
Jerzy Russian
@Punchy:
Have I ever mentioned that I am a liberal and I am against people cutting off their own peckers?
FlipYrWhig
@burnspbesq: Someone should explain to the world the not-that-complicated phenomenon whereby a small rise in one cost can be offset by a larger decline in some other cost or costs.
Jennifer
“No one expected that,” said Greg Greenwood, senior vice president of strategy for Westar.
If this guy didn’t know when implementation of changes were required to be complete because he’s so inept that he failed to read new regulations as soon as they were issued, then perhaps, you know, he shouldn’t have an executive position with the company.
scav
‘Scuse me — need an OT place-based scream. Bounce Blagojevich off all four walls at the very least! ! ! A-hem. Thanks.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Fixed.
This kind of shit goes on here in Misery too. What do we have in common? Oh yeah, wingnuts in control of the legislature.
Roger Moore
This doesn’t even have anything to do with serving the utility companies. If they just wanted what was good for the utilities, they could let them charge more to pay for the upgrades, including allowing the costs as part of their formula for figuring out how much profit they’re allowed to make, so they’d actually be more profitable with the regulations that without them. This is about irrational hatred of any and all regulations, especially anything coming from the evil folks at EPA.
The Moar You Know
Of course they would. The EPA was founded by pot-smoking Communist hippies back in 1971, and those business-hating smelly hippies won’t punch themselves.
PurpleGirl
@Jennifer: That executive (or at least someone on his staff) should have been reading the Federal Register and following the issue from the first publishing of the regulations and the public comment period.
(I worded for The Continental Can for a year as a secretary in the Corporate level legal department. The attorney I worked for handled regulatory matters and received the Federal Register everyday and read every issue, following the agencies of importance to their product companies. She also received materials from all the trade groups which were pertinent to the product companies. This also entailed working with the product company attorneys, making sure that they were following the pertinent federal agencies.)
bemused
In Minnesota, Excel Energy said last week it won’t need as much electricity in the near future but still plans to spend $438 million on environmental upgrades at it’s nuclear and coal powered plants over the next 9 years, mostly at it’s largest coal power plant. Excel said it is on target to meet the state’s green energy
MN and North Dakota are having a legal battle over energy from coal. ND is a big coal producer and wants MN to drop it’s restrictions on electricity powered by coal. In Gov Pawlenty signed into law Minnesota’s Next Generation Energy Act barring MN from building new coal-fired plants or entering into long-term contracts to buy coal-generated electricity unless they offset their new carbon emissions elsewhere. ND filed a federal lawsuit Nov 3 contending that MN law interferes with interstate commerce because it prevents ND producers from selling more electricity in MN. ND claims only the federal gov’t can regulate interstate transmission of electricity. Of course, the MN Chamber of Commerce sides with ND. Our MN Republican legislature passed a bill last session to remove the coal restrictions from the 2007 law. Gov Dayton vetoed it but approved the excemption for one small highly efficient plant in ND.
A relative who works in power grids in the Midwest including MN said that companies/utilities are pushing hard to complete energy renewal projects before the stimulus funds expire in early 2012.
burnspbesq
@PurpleGirl:
Nowadays, you can get the ToC of the FR by email every morning, with links to the actual content. I’ve been on that list for years.
Villago Delenda Est
The utilities would rather externalize their costs on to the general public, most of whom are too stupid to realize that they’re going to be paying for the fat bonuses of the executives at the utilities through medical bills for that chronic coughing they will suffer from.
So it all works out for the executives, who will have moved to Aruba to get away from all those coughing peasants.
Dave
Oh well. Look…when people write books about bad voting choices and use your state in the title, it’s hard to gin up sympathy for Kansas. These people continuously vote these jackals into office. Why should I feel bad?
Origuy
@PurpleGirl:
That person was laid off years ago and her salary rolled into the CEO’s.
Kola Noscopy
As a native Kansan who, thankfully, has lived far away from that hell hole for more than 15 years, let me quickly interject that at least we always have Oklahoma just to the south to make us look sane and liberal.
My current theory is that contaminated water, polluted by inbred hog farmers and corn holers, I mean growers, in Nebraska, flows south thru Kansas in the rivers and rots the brains of the inhabitants on its way to Oklahoma where it is likely regarded as pure and crystaline, and bottled for consumption.
Also, too: Lawrence, wherein resides my alma mater the University of Kansas, is a wonderfully liberal town full of artists and other creative types as well as a kick ass college basketball program (Go Jayhawks!). The county regularly votes blue.
Barry
@Jerzy Russian: “Have I ever mentioned that I am a liberal and I am against people cutting off their own peckers?”
I’m a liberal, and I’d never jump off a cliff. Or set myself on fire. Or donate all my worldly goods to liberal causes.
les
I think, after 2010, we Kansans (oh dog how that hurts) quite possibly created the absolute worst set of national and state office holders anywhere in the US. It’s unbefuckinglievable, and we’re so fucked nobody even bitches about it. Governor godbotherer shit canned the state arts council, costing more in lost Fed. dollars than it saved; our Atty. Gen. is the author of Ariz. and other anti-immigrant stats; our junior Senator ran proudly on his record as a Rep., said record being that he did nothing and opposed everything through two wars and a massive economic collapse. And its turtles all the way down.
Pococurante
The EPA should start an advertising blitz on all the stillborn/miscarried fetuses that will now survive long enough to be born and thus achieve anti-life status.
Matt Mangels
“I closed my eyes…But I couldn’t tell because it was dark anyway…Dust in the wind”
RalfW
About 3/4ths of the state of Kansas (full disclosure, I have three lovely cousins who live there) needs to go to Al-Anon.
They are living with a seriously dronk-on-power GOP daddy, he’s out there blowing the family budget on useless and dangerous things, they’re being taken advantage of, and they barely even know it, much less have a sense that they can get out of it…