The
Prairie State Energy high tech coal fired power plant at 4190 County Highway 12
in Marissa, Illinois was supposed to go on line last January, and provide
economically priced electricity to 150 municipal not for profit power utilities
across 9 states, annually burning 7 million tons of Illinois coal from the
Lively Grove underground mine across the highway, delivered by a continuously
operating conveyor elevated above the road. Instead, construction of the plant,
designed to power 2.5 million homes with 1,600 megawatts, 95% of which is sold
to the participating utilities on a 30 year fixed price, take or pay basis, is
six months behind schedule, and 25% over budget. Tri County Electric Coop in
southern Illinois is raising customer rates 15% to cover the overruns. Batavia
in the Chicago Suburbs has increased electric bills $8.00 to $21.00 a month to
pay for its share of the problem.
Kirkwood,
Missouri, in suburban St. Louis, has been sending checks to Prairie State
Energy for $296,000.00 per month, each of the last six months, and getting no
electric power at all in return to sell to Kirkwood families. Mark Twain’s
Hannibal, Missouri is in the same bad position. “We’re in almost a million and
a half bucks, and we don’t have a dime of revenue. All I can say is, I had
other plans for that money,” says Hannibal Board of Public Works Director Bob
Stevenson. The cash hemorrhage of these two towns, along with the other
municipal participants in Prairie State, will double in August, when the second
unit, also six months behind in construction, was originally scheduled to go on
line.
Even
with the Lively Grove underground coal mine across the road spilling out 7
million tons of coal annually from its 6 foot 8 inch high seams onto three storage
piles feeding the conveyor belt above the highway, municipal aggregators which
are part owners of Prairie State will continue losing piles of cash once both
units are fully operational. That picturesque riverfront town of Hannibal is
committed to paying $54 per megawatt hour for electricity from Prairie State,
while in today’s market it can sell the electricity for only $40 per megawatt
hour or a little less. Hannibal ratepayers’ wallets will continue getting
thinner every day for a long time, while the ghosts of Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher
stand by watching Hannibal’s citizens painting that white picket fence around Tom’s house.
