The KDHE will accept public comments until Aug. 15 on the expansion of a coal-fired power plant near Holcomb, Kan. Below, you'll find the testimony in favor of this job-creating project, presented by AFP-Kansas state director Derrick Sontag during a public hearing in Johnson County. If you would like to submit your own comments, send an email to sunflowercomments@kdheks.gov.

August 2, 2010

Kansas Department of Health and Environment
Bureau of Air
Attention: Melissa Weide
1000 S.W. Jackson, Suite 310
Topeka, KS 66612

Dear Ms. Weide:

My name is Derrick Sontag and I am the state director of the Kansas Chapter of Americans for Prosperity. We are a free-market grassroots organization with more than one million members nationwide and forty-thousand in Kansas alone. We believe in advancing every individual’s right to economic freedom and removing unnecessary barriers to entrepreneurship and opportunity. We believe the government’s job is to protect the rights of private businesses and their owners so they can grow our economy and create the private-sector jobs our country so desperately needs right now.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share with you AFP’s support for the Kansas Department of Health’s decision to issue a draft air quality permit to Sunflower Electric Power Corporation to build a power plant in Holcomb.

This new energy project will be a job-creating boost to Kansas’ economy. The project will help meet the needs of Kansas’ growing energy demands and provide low-cost electricity to more than 500,000 consumers in central and western Kansas. It will help strengthen our state’s economy by providing millions of dollars in economic impact each year and hundreds of good paying, family-wage jobs. That’s good news for Kansas and our economy. Opponents of this project say it will pollute our state and that we can solve our energy shortages through the use of wind energy and other resources.

The truth is that other businesses, such as manufacturers, emit the same thing – carbon dioxide – that the Holcomb plant emits. Emissions are a part of doing business. Sunflower’s project should not be regulated more than any other business in our state.

Sunflower is committed to protecting our environment while creating jobs and new power resources for Kansas. The project will meet or do better than state and federal regulations designed to protect human health and the environment. It will be one of the cleanest coal-fired power plants of its kind anywhere in the country with emissions that are significantly less than those from the average coal-fueled power plant. And even though opponents point to options like wind energy, our ability to take advantage of these various renewable resources is very limited. Coal remains the most abundant, affordable and reliable natural energy source in America. Coal currently fuels approximately 70 percent of Kansas’ electricity and nearly 50 percent of U.S. electricity.

Often left out of these discussions, is the economic benefits the proposed project will have for the state of Kansas. It is no secret to all involved that our state is in the midst of a severe economic downturn, which has led to high unemployment rates for many parts of Kansas.

Between May of 2009 and May of 2010, the state of Kansas lost more than 11,000 non-farm private sector jobs. Go back to May of 2008, not long after the state legislature first debated the Holcomb Power Plant Expansion Project and one finds that the state has lost a staggering 57,000 non-farm private sector jobs.

Kansas is in dire need of quality, private sector jobs and Sunflower Electric is one employer trying to provide just that.

The proposed project will provide an estimated 1,900 construction jobs over a four year time period and once operational, the plant itself will require a combination of 334 direct and indirect jobs to operate. From entry-level to management positions, these much needed jobs will represent more than $14 million in earnings. That is the kind of economic growth Kansas needs and should welcome with open arms.

The bottom line is Kansas needs this plant. We need to utilize every domestic energy resource we have in an environmentally-responsible way to make sure our community has an affordable, reliable and long-term power supply. This is the only way to make sure our businesses prosper and families are secure. The project will create jobs and help move our state forward.

Thank you again for allowing us to comment on this issue.

Sincerely,

Derrick Sontag
State Director
Kansas Chapter of Americans for Prosperity