KINDER MORGAN MOVES ON WITH MICHIGAN PLANT

JACKSON, Mich. -- Kinder Morgan is building a $250 million power plant on the site of a former Goodyear tire factory here, having been forced to abandon plans to build in a nearby farming area.

The company had wanted to build the plant about 15 miles outside of Jackson. The local planning and zoning board approved the project, but upset residents circulated a petition to get the issue on the ballot.

In November 1999, voters rejected the proposed plant, which is similar to the one the company wants to build in Cape Girardeau County.

Dave Ferrier, a senior engineer with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, remembers the criticism.

"People in the area were complaining: We moved out here to get away from the hustle and bustle of the industrial age. We don't want this power plant to take up our agricultural land and present an eyesore in the farming community,'" he said.

After the referendum, the company settled on the old Goodyear factory site in Jackson, a city of about 40,000 people in southern Michigan.

Kinder Morgan was lured in part by tax breaks and the efforts of the city's business leaders and broke ground for the plant in November 2000. It is slated to begin generating power next year.

The company secured the necessary permit from the state of Michigan, but only after agreeing to reduce the hours it would operate in order to lower air emissions, Ferrier said.

Michigan's Department of Environmental Quality had urged the company to install equipment to restrict emissions, but Kinder Morgan rejected that idea in favor of cutting operating hours, he said.

Ferrier said emissions controls are costly both in terms of equipment and operating costs. "It takes a chunk of your profits," he said.