Coal-fired power plant on South Dakota-Minnesota border DOA

Utilities kill plans for Big Stone II power plant

Coal-fired facility falls to recession, pending new rules

By Leslie Brooks Suzukamo
St. Paul Pioneer Press

Developers of the controversial Big Stone II power plant in Milbank, S.D., said Monday they will not build the $1.6 billion coal-fired project, ending a four-year battle between utilities and environmentalists over a significant portion of Minnesota's energy future.

About half of the plant's 500 megawatts to 600 megawatts of power -- enough to supply about 580,000 homes -- would have come to Minnesota. But now the regional utilities that backed the plant must go back to the drawing board to find other sources of energy for the decades ahead.

The plant had made it through a series of environmental and other regulatory hurdles, only to stumble because of the recession and uncertainty about federal climate-change regulations that scared off banks and other potential partners.

The decision to kill the Big Stone II proposal also could delay transmission projects in Minnesota and the Upper Midwest, some of which already had been approved by regulators.

(More here.)