Utah county voters pass measure on coal plants

SALT LAKE CITY - The company fighting to build a coal-fired power plant in central Utah might shop the project to another county or switch to burning cleaner natural gas, its attorney said Wednesday.

Sevier Power Co. is reassessing its options after voters in Sevier County approved a ballot proposition Tuesday that requires a public vote on coal-fired power plants.

"Sevier Power is attempting to address all of its options, including the pursuit of a coal-fired plant in Sevier County," the company lawyer, Fred Finlinson, told The Associated Press. "There may be other options that wouldn't involve coal, or we could go to another county."

Still, Finlinson reiterated arguments that Proposition 1 was flawed and doesn't apply to the planned 270-megawatt power plant on 300 acres of privately owned land near Sigurd in central Utah.

Proposition 1 requires a public vote on zoning variances for a coal plant. Finlinson said "zoning variances" are administrative actions that can't be overturned at the ballot box. He said voters can overturn only "zoning changes," a legislative matter.

The drafters of Proposition 1, he said, should have targeted the tentative zoning change — called a planned unit development — that was granted in 2006 for the coal plant, not zoning variances.

A lawsuit filed by Sevier Power briefly succeeded in kicking Proposition 1 off the ballot, but the Utah Supreme Court intervened Oct. 8, issuing an emergency order that restored the measure to the county ballot.

The court ruled that Sevier County voters can change zoning variances — specifically a conditional-use permit that supplements the zoning change that Sevier County planners tentatively granted.

The justices said that conditional-use permits are "clearly legislative in nature and susceptible to the initiative process."

The citizens' group that got the proposition on the ballot, called the Right to Vote Committee, said it clearly requires a referendum before Sevier Power Co. can build a coal-fired plant. And it says such approval is highly unlikely.

"The ball's in the power company's court," said Jeffery Owens, the lawyer for the citizen's group. "We expect there to be a public vote, as required by the law now."

But after years of trying to secure county approvals, Sevier Power now is looking at a wider range of options, Finlinson said.

Given the company's difficulties, he said, "I'm not sure why any developer would want to go to Sevier County."

County officials have said the proposition doesn't clearly defeat a project that's already in the works. The county attorney, Dale Eyre, didn't immediately return a phone call from the AP on Wednesday.

The Sevier County clerk's office said Proposition 1 passed Tuesday by a vote of 4,567 to 3,239.

In clearing the way for the ballot proposition, the Utah Supreme Court overturned a law that had been passed by the Utah Legislature and signed by Gov. Jon Huntsman.

That law prohibited citizen-led initiatives and referendums on city and county land-use ordinances. Supreme Court justices, however, said Senate Bill 53, enacted earlier this year, was unconstitutional.

The Utah Constitution allows voters to "initiate any desired legislation" by referendum, the court said in a full opinion Oct. 17. "The right to enact laws or modify them by initiative, or to reject them by referendum, is an important one."

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