Citizens' Daily Lobby

If you can’t make it to the capitol this morning, please write or call the members of the House Insurance and Commerce Committee and speak out against HB1895.  Here are some good reasons to oppose this bill, forwarded from Lev Guter at the Sierra Club.

NO on HB1895 to revise CECPN and CCN Statutes

 HB1895 would retroactively strip the courts of their power and jurisdiction over CECPN procedures, including on Turk plant

 This bill was drafted by SWEPCO and is designed to retroactively push through the Turk coal plant proposal in the Arkansas Legislature because the utility is losing in the courts

 1.  HB1895 would strip the Courts of their CECPN jurisdiction as well as the public’s right to comment at a public proceeding.  The bill is an attempt to overturn the Arkansas Supreme Court’s unanimous decision that invalidated Turk’s Certificate of Environmental Compatibility and Public Need (CECPN).

            a.  The Arkansas Court of Appeals and the Arkansas Supreme Court both unanimously

held that the Arkansas Public Service Commission (PSC) improperly granted SWEPCO a CECPN because the PSC split the hearings into two separate proceedings instead of looking at all of the evidence, including need, alternatives and environmental impacts in one hearing, as the current law requires.

                       b.  HB1895 would retroactively change current law so that a PSC’s finding of “Need”

would be done in a non-CECPN proceeding.  If the legislature were to pass this bill, the law would change so that SWEPCO would be permitted a private proceeding with no public notice, the exact procedure that the Arkansas Supreme Court said is illegal under current law.

 2.  HB1895 would change existing law that is currently the subject of pending litigation in front of the Arkansas Supreme Court.  SWEPCO, a party to a pending lawsuit on Turk, is attempting to change the law right in the middle of a court case to suit its needs.  The average citizen in a lawsuit does not have that influence and power, and nor should SWEPCO. 

             a.   One of the questions currently before the Arkansas Supreme Court is whether

Turk can claim an exemption to the PSC’s jurisdiction by applying for “merchant plant” status after SWEPCO has already applied for a CECPN which was then invalidated by the Arkansas Supreme Court.  HB1895 is an attempt to prevent the Arkansas Supreme Court from resolving this issue by outright changing the law to allow the PSC to exempt Turk from the PSC’s jurisdiction as a “merchant plant” and by preventing any court from enforcing the CECPN law.

3.  HB1895 would be retroactively applied to the pending Turk court cases.  Make no mistake about it- SWEPCO’s bill would apply retroactively, serving as a back door method of completing the contested Turk coal-fired power plant.

             a.   HR1895’s Emergency Clause in section 13 would clear the way for currently

proposed utility plants by making sure that the bill has “both retrospective and prospective application.” 

                   b.   Calling the bill’s fundamental changes “clarifications” is a less obvious,  underhanded

way SWEPCO is attempting to make the new provisions retroactive; i.e. enabling SWEPCO to argue that this new law did not change anything—it only “clarified” what the legislature meant to do 35 years ago.  But as explained above, the bill makes sweeping, substantial and fundamental changes to current law.  SWEPCO does not need the law “clarified,” the Supreme Court has already done that—SWEPCO needs to comply with the Supreme Court’s decision.