Wait and see on Turk ruling

As both the Arkansas Public Service Commission and AEP/Southwestern Electric Power Co. assess the impact of Thursday's Arkansas Supreme Court ruling to overturn the PSC's approval of a certificate of need for the John W. Turk, Jr., Power Plant, no-one has indicated that construction of the plant is in jeopardy at this point.

“We are in the process of reviewing the Supreme Court decision. We are glad the Supreme Court agreed with the Commission's use of separate proceedings for the plant and transmission lines,” SWEPCO spokesman Peter Main said in a statement late Thursday.

The question, Main pointed out, now turns on what the court meant in Chief Justice Jim Hannah's opinion concerning the relationship between the need for the plant and how that need would be met by the Turk proposal.

“We are evaluating the decision as it pertains to the process of determining the need for additional generating capacity,” Main said.

He said no decision has been made by the company regarding a motion for rehearing before the court.

“There is an 18-day period for the Commission, the appellants or SWEPCO to request a rehearing,” he said. “This is a complicated case and we continue to examine our options.”

Main had no comment on other options.

Jon Bethel, executive director of the PSC, said Thursday that he has not been given any time frame for the PSC to consider its options other than the 18 day appeal period.

“We're still in the process of evaluating the decision, and then deciding how to proceed from there,” Bethel said. He said the PSC would not issue any statement on the decision, and there are no dockets planned before the Commission at which that might be discussed.

One of the options that has not been publicly discussed, but has been raised, is turning the project into a so-called “merchant plant,” according to State Representative David “Bubba” Powers, D-Hope. Under that scenario, the plant could be built, but not as a “baseload” generating facility; instead, it would be used to supply peak power demand periods.

“I certainly think a merchant plant would be a distinct possibility,” Powers said. “I know that's not what AEP wants; but, we're still constructing the plant,” Powers said. “As of this morning, I don't have any indications other than to construct the plant.”

While disappointing, Powers said the decision was not entirely unexpected.

“I don't think it killed the project,” he said. “The Supreme Court did say the PSC was wrong in allowing the project this way.”

Power said he was concerned that, while Hannah addressed the central question in the heart of his opinion, the court appeared to want to get into issues not related to the point of the appeal.

“If that's the way we're going to do things, why have a PSC? Why not just sent it to the Supreme Court?,” Powers noted.

Powers doubted that any change in the statute by the Arkansas General Assembly would help clarify the present problem.

“That has been discussed,” he said. “We discussed that in the last legislative session. Whether it would be retroactive and help our current situation, I'm not certain that would be the case.”

Hempstead County Economic Development Corp. President Wesley Woodard said this morning that the decision will likely change the way the PSC considers such projects in the future, but that it made no sense to have the PSC to decide everything relative to such a project when the only question was the need for the additional power capacity in the first place.

“Common sense says you need to to that,” Woodard said.