Idaho Flirts With Coal Power, Looks For Different Date

By Shea Andersen, 3-30-06

It took less than an hour for the Idaho State Senate to ratify and send to Gov. Dirk Kempthorne (he of the Interior Secretary nomination) one of the more momentous environmental votes of recent history.

With a 30-5 vote, the Republican-dominated Senate agreed with its similarly Republican House to install a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants in the state for two years.

The vote surprised few who'd seen the bill's momentum and its robust public support (as of Wednesday, roughly 7,000 Idahoans were said to have signed petitions against a plant proposed for rural Jerome County. Several local governments and business/agriculture/medical/education associations had expressed official opposition).

Least surprised was Sempra Energy, the San Diego energy firm that hoped to build a 600-megawatt coal-fired power plant in a rural county of southern Idaho. Just an hour before the Senate's vote, they shipped a letter to Kempthorne and leaders of the Senate saying, in effect, "We're outta here."

Anyone who thinks Idaho has permanently dodged a coal-fired power plant after Sempra's exit, of course, is kidding themselves. As he hustled on to the next meeting, Senate Minority Leader Clint Stennett, a Hailey Democrat who sponsored the moratorium bill, said "this changes nothing."

In its letter to state leaders, Sempra said it planned to sell the development rights to its Idaho project.

"The Jerome County site selected for the project's development offers prospective owners excellent access to rail, existing transmission, land, and water rights," said Sempra President Michael Niggli. The next step for Sempra is to find a buyer, unload the development rights, and leave Idaho with a new coal-power suitor.

Idaho is among a rare few states in the West that don't have coal-fired power plants, and that fact was not forgotten among backers of the moratorium. How long the state might keep that status is really a matter of when, not if, judging by the West's increasing power demands. The economics of the situation are too enticing to keep other power companies from getting into the act.

Today the brand-new Interim Commission on Energy Policy begins its work in Idaho. Lawmakers will gather to attempt to draw up new regulations for big-wheel power generators that will be coming to call upon the state with so much available land, rail lines between coal producing states and energy-demanding states (read: Wyoming and California) and an as-yet-undefined regulatory environment.

The last question, unanswered as of today, is whether or not Kempthorne signs the legislation. Certainly the will of the people of Idaho is behind the concept. But Kempthorne has new masters these days; he is less a leader of the state of Idaho than a prospective employee of the Bush White House. And how he decides on energy policy could affect his success in front of a U.S. Senate confirmation panel and out among other states he attempts to work with on the national level.

Thus does Idaho's waiting game begin anew.
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