State's delays imperil economic development

Kinder Morgan Power Co.'s recent decision to drop its plans to build a $300 million power plant in rural Cape Girardeau County came as good news and as bad news.

For several property owners in the Crump and Whitewater communities who had vigorously opposed the plant, the decision was good news.

Local opposition was based on a couple of factors. First was concern about the noise the gas-turbine generating plant would produce around the clock. Second was concern about ground-water levels.

The idea was to take advantage of a plentiful supply of natural gas -- the proposed plant is near a major transcontinental pipeline -- and convert excess natural gas to electricity, which then would be brokered to utility companies in need of extra kilowatts.

This kind of gas-to-electricity system is successfully being used around the country. Kinder Morgan has other such plants in other states. This was Kinder Morgan's first venture into Missouri, even though one of the company's founders, Richard D. Kinder, is a Cape Girardeau native.

Some residents near the proposed plant site feared the noise would be objectionable. Some of them had visited similar plants elsewhere and came home convinced they didn't want to listen to the noise of jet engines, no matter how the company might attempt to muffle the sound.

The most visible source of concern, however, was a large sinkhole on a farm next to the proposed plant site. The sinkhole appeared after Kinder Morgan drilled deep wells to test the water flow. The proposed plant would have been cooled by water from the wells.

The company said its tests showed its deep wells and multimillion-gallon-a-day water pumping -- equal to the water produced each day for the city of Jackson -- did not cause the sinkhole. Area residents experienced turbidity in their private wells at the time the tests were conducted.

But even while residents near the proposed plant breathed a sigh of relief, some state and county officials expressed concern that the handling by state regulators of Kinder Morgan's proposal was bad news for economic development in Missouri.

Kinder Morgan first filed an application with the Department of Natural Resources in 2000 to build the plant. The DNR denied the company's air-quality permit in 2001, which Kinder Morgan appealed to the Air Conservation Commission. A decision on that appeal has been delayed for months, and it's this delay -- which Kinder Morgan described as deliberate stalling -- that caused the company to drop its plans.

The concern is that the state is sending a signal to companies that might be interested in locating a plant in Missouri. Leaving the dispute over air quality aside, Kinder Morgan was entitled to a timely decision on its permit request. The delays were inexcusable, and the state needs to find a way to speed up the process.