Sierra Club, Aububon ask federal court to stop work on coal-fired power plant in Arkansas

Environment groups aim to stop work on power plant

TEXARKANA, Ark. — Two environmental groups have asked a federal court to halt work on a coal-fired power plant near Fulton in southwest Arkansas, arguing that proper assessments of the plant’s effect on valuable wetlands were never done.

The state Supreme Court recently ruled the Arkansas Public Service Commission improperly granted a permit for the John W. Turk plant and sent the matter back to the PSC for the permit process to begin anew. That ruling, however, didn’t stop work on the plant.

The Sierra Club and Audubon Arkansas, as well as the National Audubon Society, said Monday they had filed a request with federal court at Texarkana for a stop-work injunction against Southwest Electric Power Co., which is building the $1.7 billion, 600-megawatt plant.

The documents filed Friday claim SWEPCO and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers didn’t do environmental impact studies required by federal law.

Pat Hemlett, a spokesman for Columbus, Ohio-based American Electric Power Co., which owns SWEPCO, said the company would file a response to the lawsuit within the two weeks allowed by the federal court.

The company was already reviewing the project after the state Supreme Court ruling, he said. Work on the plant was about 30 percent complete and, without interruption, it would begin producing electricity in October 2012, he said.

The environmental groups say the 2,800-acre site where the plant is being built contains wetlands.

“The Turk plant is harmful to both the quantity and quality of water in this pristine wetlands-dependent ecosystem,” according to Ellen Fennell, interim director of Arkansas Audubon. “An officially designated Important Bird Area, the Little River Bottoms incubates literally thousands of birds that populate not just Arkansas but also surrounding states.

“The recent BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico sadly is demonstrating what can happen when large projects like the Turk plant are put into motion without adequately assessing their environmental and public health impacts.”

Richard H. Mays of Heber Springs, a lawyer for the two environmental groups, said they would ask the court to order the Army Corps to conduct the studies the law requires and stop work on the site until those studies are carried out.

Environmentalists’ objections to the plant have in the past focused on the planned use of coal to produce electricity.

“Pollution from SWEPCO’s dirty coal plant poses a serious risk to not only the ecosystem in which it is being built, but all of Arkansas,” Sierra Club spokesman Lev Guter said. “We must move beyond our dependence on dirty coal if we are going to keep Arkansas the Natural State.”