Sierra Club extends Kemper coal-plant legal battle
Sierra Club officials in Mississippi are continuing a legal fight to stop construction of a $2.88 billion coal-gasification power plant by a Southern Co utility in Kemper County, Mississippi.
Last week, the Mississippi Public Service Commission (PSC) voted 2-1 to re-issue a certificate allowing the utility, Mississippi Power Co, to build a 582-megawatt integrated gasification combined-cycle (IGCC) power plant one month after the state supreme court vacated the panel’s original certificate issued in 2010.
The Sierra Club, which claims 1,700 members in Mississippi, appealed the commission’s latest action at the Mississippi Supreme Court late last week, calling the order “arbitrary, capricious, beyond legal authority and unsupported by substantial evidence.”
The environmental group’s filing described the commission’s April 24 order as “abandoning many of its previous finding from the 2010 Kemper orders, and substituting new and contradictory ones geared at supporting approval of the Kemper project.”
Reuters
4/30/12
Magnolia Tribune
