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Posted on Fri, Mar. 02, 2007
By KAREN DILLON
The Kansas City Star
KCP&L, Sierra Club Step Up Battle
Both sides have gone to court in a conflict over plants near Weston.
New legal actions are ratcheting up an already heated battle between a utility and environmental groups over coal-fired power plants near Weston.
A federal grand jury in Kansas City has subpoenaed Kansas City Power & Light records about upgrades that were done during the past decade to the Iatan 1 plant.
The grand jury asked for the records from the Sierra Club, which had obtained them from the utility and said Thursday that they show violations of air pollution laws.
But also on Thursday, KCP&L filed a lawsuit asking a federal court to declare that Sierra Club allegations about pollution violations are wrong.
The Iatan 1 power plant has complied with the Federal Clean Air Act, according to the lawsuit, which seeks to have the issue resolved as soon as possible.
The grand jury subpoena, obtained Thursday by The Kansas City Star, was served on an attorney for the Sierra Club who had collected the records from KCP&L as part of discovery in a legal case. The Sierra Club has filed several legal actions against KCP&L in attempts to halt construction of the Iatan 2 plant.
Bill Riggins, KCP&L vice president of legal and environmental affairs and general counsel, said Thursday that no utility officials had received a subpoena to come before the grand jury, nor had they spoken to investigators. But he said he had seen the Sierra Club's subpoena because the group had sent it to the utility Monday as a courtesy. The utility knows nothing about the grand jury investigation, he said, but has no concerns about wrongdoing.
"We know what the Sierra Club has," Riggins said. "There is nothing in those documents that causes us concern."
The nature of the grand jury investigation was unclear.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Anne E. Rauch, whose name is listed on the subpoena, did not return a telephone call. Special Agent Daryl Hultman of the Environmental Protection Agency's criminal investigations division said agency policy prohibits investigators from commenting on the existence of an investigation.
The subpoena asks that Maxine I. Lipeles of the Washington University School of Law testify April 3 before the grand jury at the federal courthouse in Kansas City. Lipeles is to bring the documents with her.
The KCP&L lawsuit filed Thursday seeks to bring an end to the Sierra Club’s accusations, utility officials said.
Bill Downey, KCP&L's chief executive officer, told The Star that for more than a year the Sierra Club had raised allegations that the plant was violating federal law. Those allegations are baseless, he said.
The utility has provided the Sierra Club with more than 1.3 million documents and has spent $1.6 million in legal fees fighting the organization’s allegations, he said.
"We don't have anything to hide," Downey said. "It is time to get the truth out and bring this issue to closure."
Bruce Nilles, attorney and director of the Sierra Club's Midwest Clean Air Campaign, said the KCP&L lawsuit was "an act of desperation."
Riggins said the lawsuit was not filed because of any grand jury investigation. Instead, he said, the request for declaratory judgment was filed because the Sierra Club had announced it was moving its challenge to Iatan 1's air permit to federal court. Riggins said that would have the effect of starting the legal challenges all over again.
That part of the Sierra Club's challenge was to have begun Monday at a state administrative hearing.
Nilles said that if a federal court found that KCP&L violated federal law, a judge could require the utility to reduce its pollution emissions. In addition, penalties could be assessed. There are no penalties at the state level.
Nilles contends that the Sierra Club's review of KCP&L documents showed "overwhelming evidence" that Iatan 1 had violated pollution laws.
The Sierra Club's legal challenge had been based primarily on an analysis last year by a group at the Washington University Law School.
The group, led by Lipeles, said it found that the boiler at the Iatan 1 plant had been upgraded without notifying regulators or obtaining a permit. If that were true, it would mean the plant has been pumping thousands more tons of toxic chemicals into the air than it should have.
KCP&L has said it never made any major upgrades or violated pollution laws.
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