Consumers Energy Karn-Weadock coal plant (Photo courtesy of Hampton Township)

Consumers Energy Karn Weadock coal plant (Photo courtesy of Hampton Township)

A coalition of environmental groups is asking state and federal regulators to take a careful look at the potential wetlands impact of a coal-fired power plant planned by Consumers Energy along Saginaw Bay.

Consumers Energy has proposed building a new 930 megawatt power plant at its Karn Weadock generating complex in Bay County.

Company spokeswoman Mary Gust told Michigan Messenger that Consumers Energy worked with three different consultants to determine that there are less that seven acres of wetlands on this 500 acre site, and filed a permit application with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality’s Land and Water Management Division on Sept. 29 seeking approval of development plans.

On Oct. 14, DEQ notified Consumers Energy that it considered the application incomplete.

“There are insufficient data in the application to demonstrate that the site is effectively drained and that wetland hydrology is absent,” DEQ stated.

In an interview DEQ spokesman Bob McCann said that the agency believes that there is some level of wetlands at the site, which is tilled farmland, and DEQ wants more information about how much pumping had been done to keep the area dry.

Environmental groups argue that documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that in pre-application arguments the company has been negotiating with regulators over what portion of the planned development site should be considered regulated wetlands. Because the proposed building site borders Lake Huron and the Saginaw River, they say, the DEQ and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — which has jurisdiction over navigable waters and adjacent wetlands — likely have jurisdiction over far more than the few acres identified by the power company.

Some are wary of environmental assessments by the company.

“They’ve known about their ash landfills leaking into Saginaw Bay since 1982 and are only now dealing with them,“ Lone Tree Council Chairman Terry Miller said in a statement. “Now, when they realize the property they’ve chosen to build on might be regulated wetlands, they are using legal smoke and mirrors to argue against its protection.”

A group of environmental organizations — the Natural Resources Defense Council, Environmental Law and Policy Center, Great Lakes Environmental Law Center, Lone Tree Council, Midland CARES, and Sierra Club — sent a letter to the DEQ and the Army Corps asking that regulators “thoroughly and independently” review the potential impact of the project on wetlands which provide habitat and flood control and filter pollutants.

State regulation of wetlands has come under increasing political pressure this year.

In her February State of the State address, Gov. Jennifer Granholm proposed handing the DEQ’s wetland permitting program over to the federal government, and also announced an executive order requiring that coal plants receive enhanced environmental review.

The timing of these moves struck some as meaningful.

“It suggests to me that there is the potential that some trading is going on here,” former DEQ director Russ Harding told Michigan Messenger earlier this year.

Harding, who as director of the Property Rights Network at the Mackinac Center supported the ultimately unsuccessful move to end Michigan’s wetland permitting program said that he believes Consumers Energy would have an easier time obtaining necessary permits if the matter was handled exclusively by the Army Corps. He said he feels that an anti-coal bias could prejudice DEQ consideration of the wetland permit.

Consumers Energy is also waiting on a DEQ air permit for the proposed coal plant, and it’s not clear that this permit will be granted. The governor has ordered DEQ to consider whether proposed coal plants are the most prudent and feasible way to meet the state’s energy needs which are declining. A Michigan Public Service Commission analysis prepared for the DEQ last month stated that Consumers Energy had not demonstrated that the proposed plant is needed.