State may help decide on sites

Lawmakers and stakeholders disagree about who should oversee where new, potentially polluting power plants in Idaho should be located: a state agency or local officials.

Some worry that a community’s decision to site a coal-fired or nuclear plant could affect nearby residents without giving them a say in the process.

Idaho’s new energy policy recommends a compromise, suggesting giving a state advisory board power to assist communities with siting but forgoing a state siting board like Oregon’s.

In a minority report, four Democratic lawmakers assert that existing law is inadequate to protect Idahoans and the environment from future plants.

Statewide input would have been useful when Cogentrix Energy and Avista Corp. built a gas-fired plant on the Rathdrum Prairie in 2000, for example, said Sen. Kate Kelly, D-Boise.

But North Idaho legislators said state air and water quality and land-use planning officials are already involved in siting. They participated in the Rathdrum Prairie process, said Rep. Eric Anderson, R-Priest River.

Arne Olson, a San Francisco-based energy consultant who helped write Idaho’s policy, said state siting authority in other states has allowed contractors to supercede local opposition.