Group: CU disguises power plant facts

Less than two weeks before the June 6 vote, Ratepayers for Affordable Utilities staged a press conference to state its case against a new coal-fired power plant in Springfield. Former Springfield Mayor Lee Gannaway led the charge, saying during the May 24 conference that CU is disguising information in its proposal for Southwest 2.

CU officials and plant supporters, however, say the group has their own fundamental misconceptions about the issue.

Gannaway, a Springfield attorney speaking on behalf of Ratepayers for Affordable Utilities, contends that CU management has misled the public in its position that a new local coal-fired power plant at the Southwest Power Station would be less expensive than a proposed partnership with Nebraska-based Tenaska Energy Inc. for a coal-fired plant in northeast Oklahoma.

Gannaway said that when he requested information from CU about the wholesale cost of electricity per kilowatt-hour from a local coal-fired plant, so it could be compared with the proposals considered by outside consultant Black & Veatch Corp., CU did not supply the information.

“What conclusion can we draw from their answer?” Gannaway said. “Either they don’t know what their cost per kilowatt-hour is, or it’s so darned high, they don’t want us to know what their cost is.”

CU, though, says that Gannaway’s group requested tables that didn’t yet exist. CU officials said that Southwest 2 and Tenaska were not compared on a per-kilowatt-hour basis because it is considered a more preliminary screening method.

In an interview following the Ratepayers for Affordable Utilities press conference, CU General Manager John Twitty said the cost per kilowatt-hour for the local plant is about 4.5 cents, compared to 5.04 cents for the Tenaska project.

Gannaway also said the $17.49 figure CU uses in its “Check the Facts” brochures as the next best monthly rate also is misleading. He claims it is based not on the Tenaska proposal but rather on a purchase proposal from a new plant to be built in Illinois by Peabody Energy.

Energy purchased through the Peabody deal would cost 33 percent more than Tenaska’s purchase proposal, according to Black & Veatch’s report.

Twitty said the Peabody example was used because there are uncertainties with the Tenaska plan.

“The (Tenaska) proposal did not include a firm price, and there was no guarantee as to the commercial operation date,” Twitty said. “There’s no guarantee to the capacity output or unit availability, no site has been purchased, no preliminary plant design has been performed, no air modeling has been performed, no air permit had been filed, and in Black and Veatch’s opinion, the scheduled proposed commercial operation date was very optimistic.”

Twitty said Peabody is the least-expensive option that would not require a public vote, because it would not involve having an ownership stake in a new power plant.

“If we lose on June 6, we will have been beaten (at the polls) twice inside two years, and it would be irresponsible of us not to have the next-best alternative be something that does not require an election,” Twitty said.

Black & Veatch determined in January that building a local plant “is the least cost option in the greatest number of scenarios” and “is the most economic baseload alternative for the CU.”

Matt Morrow, chairman of the Vote Yes for Local Power Supply Committee, said he doesn’t fault the Ratepayers group for asking questions about the proposal.

“They have honest questions and concerns, but that particular group has a very deep mistrust of City Utilities that leads to some of these assumptions,” he said.

“The important thing is to not let any of these questions go unanswered, because there are good answers to all of those questions.”

Ratepayers for Affordable Utilities formed in July 2004 to oppose CU’s first proposal.