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Shady Point Coal Plant Should Not be PermittedSierra Club Agrees with Commission Staff that Shady Point Coal Plant Should Not be Permitted to Burden Ratepayers with New Costs September 9 --- Today the Sierra Club added its support to the Oklahoma Corporation Commission staff's recommendation that the Commission refuse to consider AES Shady Point's request to pass on the costs of compliance with future environmental regulations to ratepayers. AES is an independent power producer that sells energy to Oklahoma Gas & Electric (OG&E). If AES application were approved, OG&E's energy customers would be faced with higher energy bills. The Oklahoma Corporation Commission oversees public utilities, which may be entitled to recover the costs associated with adding new pollution control equipment, but it does not regulate private facilities like Shady Point, which sell power directly to utilities as a wholesaler. AES is effectively asking the Commission to modify its contract agreement with OG&E with ratepayers covering the costs of the pollution equipment. Public oversight of utilities includes scrutiny of costs and energy agreements that could affect ratepayers. Since Shady Point does not bear the burden of Commission oversight, it is not entitled to the same benefits as public service utilities. AES is a private company with no limit on the amount of profit it makes and new environmental regulations are a risk of doing business. With profit as its primary motivating factor, AES can pay for upgrades to its facilities. Charles Wesner, President of the Oklahoma Chapter of the Sierra Club, raised the question, "Why should ratepayers in Oklahoma pay for a private company's cost of doing business?" Darryl Phillips, a resident in Sallisaw and a leader of the Sequoyah County Clean Air Coalition said "the burden of high energy bills is already more than many Oklahoma families can handle and Oklahomans should simply not be taken advantage of as AES has proposed in its filing to the Corporation Commission!" Contact: A second proposed Shady Point coal-fired plant, a 630 MW unit, is attracting strong opposition from a broad coalition of local citizens and groups in Sallisaw, Ft. Smith, Tulsa, Oklahoma City and conservation groups such as the National Wildlife Federation and Audubon. Shady Point 2 has the potential to emit annually more than 6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, the major component in greenhouse gases and primary cause of global warming, and hundred of pounds of hazardous air pollutants including mercury, a known toxic to children and wildlife. Kenneth Smith, a vice president of Audubon based in Little Rock said "a Shady Point 2 plant will impact our public lands, particularly the Ouachita and Ozark National Forests, its wilderness areas, and the Buffalo River, the country's first national river created in 1972." Doctors John Weddle and JP Bell, physicians in Ft. Smith and Muldrow, Oklahoma, expressed health related fears at a local citizens meeting recently in Ft. Smith, "the medical evidence is overwhelming that emissions from coal plants contribute significantly to pulmonary problems in children and the elderly and that state and federal air quality standards and air monitoring stations are inadequate to protect residents in the border state region." Contact:
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