Tag Archives: Parkinson
Industry Wields Sway Over Air Pollution Rules, Enforcement
Sunflower Electric’s Kansas permit success (to date) is a telling snapshot of how, when industry flexes its muscles over Clean Air Act issues, it often wins. From Kansas to Louisiana to Texas, Wisconsin and Ohio, community groups have fought new plants, expansions and chronic emissions – only to see industry score victories with regulators and politicians. Continue reading
Fair Fight?
Whether people are opposed to or supportive of Sunflower’s coal-fired plant, the regulatory trail this project has traveled over the last four or five years raises questions and concerns. This is a contentious fight, but it doesn’t help KDHE or Kansas to be caught misrepresenting the facts of the case. Continue reading
Diversion of Weatherization Funds in Kansas Perplexes Homeowners
Kansas lost more than a thousand jobs and the chance to weatherize thousands of homes, thanks to a state-run loan program that rolled out too slowly. The Brownback administration gave over $20 million to two organizations as a grant, as opposed to having this money flow for years through communities to all kinds of middle class residents. Continue reading
Serve Kansans’ Health
By Rhonda Holman for the Wichita Eagle The Kansas Department of Health and Environment under Gov. Kathleen Sebelius created “regulatory uncertainty” for business, or so critics said. Nowadays, it increasingly looks as if the certainty is that KDHE will do … Continue reading
Sunflower’s Permit Should be Denied
Bob Somer, special to The Kansas City Star By now it should be clear to anyone who has followed the five-year saga of Sunflower Electric’s efforts to build a second coal-fired utility plant in Holcomb, Kan., that the public has … Continue reading
Dirty Coal, Dirty Tactics in Bid for Kansas Power Plant
Editorial by The Kansas City Star The bid to build a coal-fired power plant in Kansas is shredding the credibility of much it touches — the former governor who endorsed it, the state agency that rushed to approve it and … Continue reading
Clear Air: Controversy Warrants Response from KDHE, Utility
From the Garden City Telegram Latest controversy warrants response from utility, KDHE. In the ongoing saga over a proposed Sunflower Electric Power Corp. plant expansion, behind-the-scenes exchanges between the utility and state officials have generated still more scrutiny of the … Continue reading
KDHE was a Lapdog
By Phillip Brownlee for the editorial board of the Wichita Eagle State regulators should work with businesses. But they shouldn’t turn permitting processes over to applicants — which is what the Kansas Department of Health and Environment effectively did with … Continue reading
The Message to Kansans: ‘Let Them Eat Coal Dust’
The Kansas City Star recently obtained a sample of the many hundreds of emails between the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) and Sunflower Electric Power Corporation (Sunflower) that indicate Sunflower staff, attorneys, and consultants drafted KDHE responses to … Continue reading
Collusion in Kansas Force-Feeds Coal Power
By Brian Smith for Earthjustice “This is not how government is supposed to work” Americans are worried about their government.We imagine backroom deals are cut, fates are foretold and the little guy always gets shafted because powerful interests own the … Continue reading
