Lawmakers in the Idaho House could hardly have done otherwise when they voted by a lopsided 64-5 to impose a two-year moratorium on construction of coal-fired power plants in the state.
Opposition has been popping up throughout southern and south-central Idaho to the $1.4 billion Sempra generating plant planned for Jerome County. Consequences of coal emissions to dairy animals, humans, the air and water in several counties have come into sharper focus.
Now the legislation faces action in the state Senate, which should follow in the same footsteps of wise House members. Unfortunately, in an earlier action the House showed less perspicacity when it voted down a resolution for Idaho to put a cap of zero on mercury air emissions.
No matter.
With a moratorium on the books, the state will have time to study the effects of coal-fueled industry on air and water and life. The freeze may also force Sempra, which seems to be in a rush to get a go-ahead for the plant, to keep its implied threat to abandon the project if delayed.
Studying coal's environmental impact is especially vital. Just as Idaho was picked by Sempra to site a "merchant" plant—generating power not for local consumption but for export to other states—other operators might look in the state for locales for industrial operations if safeguards are relaxed or non-existent.
Idaho joins other states that are increasingly hostile to coal and environmentally unfriendly industry. California, once a prime export outlet for Sempra's power, has imposed a ban on importing any electricity from polluting plants.
A federal appeals court in the District of Columbia last week sent the Environmental Protection Agency packing when it tried to slip through relaxed standards for coal-fired plants in northeastern states.
Idaho has too much to lose to open its doors and remarkably clear air to smokestack industries with polluting emissions known to damage air and water.
No supposed benefits to the Jerome area—jobs and tax revenues—could possibly compensate for the long-term environmental and health damages in counties downwind from the Sempra plant.
Make no mistake, however. Business-as-usual, not health and the environment, is primary with some Idaho lawmakers.
As one of the few who opposed the moratorium, Republican Rep. Lenore Barrett seethed that "the free enterprise system takes short shrift while we stall and study."
That's easy for her to say. Rep. Barrett is safely isolated from any emissions in her home in Challis, 150 miles from the proposed Jerome plant site.
