When President Obama tapped Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius as his choice for Secretary of Health and Human Services, groups fighting to maintain the precedent-setting decision to reject the permit for a new coal-fired power plant were rightly concerned the new governor would reverse the decision… and rightly so.

Just six days into his shortened term as governor of Kansas, Mark Parkinson ended a two-year stalemate between the State of Kansas and a group of power companies vying to expand a coal-fired power plant in southwestern Kansas. The case became the unlikely front in the legal/institutional battle over regulating carbon in the United States.

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When President Obama tapped Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius for Secretary of Health and Human Services, there may have been some tightening in the chests of those fighting an expansion of the Holcomb Station coal-fired power plant - an expansion Sebelius has fought hard against.

In 2007, Kansas become the central battleground in the fight against coal and regulating carbon dioxide when state Health and Environmental Secretary Roderick Bremby made the landmark decision to deny an air permit for the expansion at Holcomb, ruling that carbon dioxide needed to be regulated as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act.

But the principle beneficiaries of the expansion immediately launched a multi-venue political campaign to challenge the decision. Sunflower Electric of Kansas, Tri-State G&T of Colorado, and Golden Spread Electric Cooperative poured money into lawsuits, public relations campaigns, and got legislation introduced into the House and Senate that would override Bremby and Sebellius. Gov. Sebelius vetoed all three coal bills last year and coal supporters never mustered enough votes for an override. To date, the decision sticks.

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Editor’s note: Welcome to “Tangled Up in Green,” Red, Green and Blue’s weekly debate over the hot issues in environmental politics. Each week, writers Ranjit Arab and Adam Bowman will “throw down the glove” on current events involving environmental policy, legislation and citizen action. Adam and Ranjit are both graduate students in journalism at the University of Kansas, and currently enrolled in Professor Simran Sethi’s “Media and the Environment” course.

In Holcomb, Kansas, there rages a battle over energy, jobs, and economy.

The Sunflower Electric Company has a plan to build two coal-fired power plants that would produce 1400 megawatts of power. And until the Secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE), Roderick L. Bremby, denied the application for an air quality permit, they probably would be breaking ground right now.

People in the more populated Eastern part of Kansas, (which is pretty much all powered by coal), want to abandon the coal for sustainable wind energy. For Kansas, wind makes a lot of sense. Wind maps show that we are sitting in a very productive wind energy area. Basically any state in the Great Plains has an abundance of wind at their disposal. And the good news is, there isn’t any waste emissions or land ruining strip mining to harvest this energy.

But what about Eastern and Western States that aren’t sitting on a wind gold mine?

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Does the town of Holcomb, Kansas sound familiar?

I’m sure it does if you’ve read “In Cold Blood,” or seen the movies based on the book and its author Truman Capote.

In a perverted way that negative association has been somewhat of a godsend. People remember Holcomb; they immediately recall it as the place where a senseless and unspeakable crime was committed.

Unfortunately, it looks like Holcomb may be preparing for a sequel, featuring yet another heinous act. This time it involves the attempts of Sunflower Electric Corp.—along with several lawmakers—to force an expansion of the power company’s Holcomb facilities, which would include two hazardous coal-burning electric plants.

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