Power4Georgians is a consortium of six electric membership cooperatives, including Marietta-based Cobb EMC, that plan to build and own Plant Washington in Sandersville, about 130 miles southwest of Atlanta.
Dean Alford, spokesman for Power4Georgians, said the group hopes to have all permitting issues resolved and financing in place by the end of this year, paving the way for four years of construction and a fully operational, $2.1 billion, 850-megawatt coal plant by 2016 or 2017.
When plans to build the plant were announced in 2008, it was stated that Cobb EMC would own about 25 percent and purchase roughly that same percentage of power the plant produces. But on Tuesday, EMC spokesman Sam Kelly, who wrote a letter to the editor last month claiming full transparency regarding Cobb EMC's involvement in Power4Georgians, would not say how much ownership the co-op could have in the plant going forward.
Another co-op spokeswoman also could not give a ballpark figure for ownership, but stated, "Cobb EMC wants to be a significant owner ... Dwight and the board are looking at this as an opportunity. Cobb is a primary driver for this asset and is expected to be a primary user."
The only money that has been spent for Plant Washington so far has gone toward obtaining permits and some land acquisition. According to Cobb EMC, that amount is around $12 million, of which the local cooperative has contributed roughly half. Whether that is an indication of how much stake Cobb EMC would have in owning Plant Washington remains unclear.
According to Cobb EMC's 2010 annual report, the co-op owns 39 percent of Power4Georgians. However, Kelly said that is also not an indication of how much ownership the co-op would have in the coal plant.
Since the plans to build the plant were announced, four electric cooperatives have decided to opt out, leaving Cobb EMC and five others pushing forward with the project.
Due to this and other factors, Alford and Kelly said the percentages of ownership for Plant Washington among the EMCs has not yet been decided.
Alford said ownership would be solidified when the permitting process is complete and financing is in place.
Alford, a five-term representative in the Georgia House and president of Allied Energy Services, which is the company the cooperatives retained to lead development and the permitting effort, said his company is being paid on an hourly basis, but declined to say how much that amount is.
As for paying for the coal plant, Kelly said, "...construction of Plant Washington will be financed with a loan that will be paid back with proceeds from the electricity sold by Power4Georgians over a long term, perhaps 50 years. What percentage of that cost will be Cobb EMC's wont be know until the financing is obtained" and other factors.
Alford said financing is based on the quality of the company and "Cobb EMC is in good financial shape to get the financing."
However, opponents of the plant, as well as a handful of plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the cooperative, have raised concerns about the financial handlings by Cobb EMC leadership. An ongoing October 2007 civil suit alleged gross mismanagement, waste of corporate assets and unjust enrichment. Further, Plant Washington opponents and environmentalists raise the issue of Brown's indictment earlier this month on several counts of theft and racketeering. Brown is listed as "organizer" on legal documents to establish Power4Georgians.
"Investing in a coal plant is already a bad idea," Ulla Reeves of Southern Alliance for Clean Energy said. "Investing money where corruption has been alleged at the helm is a boondoggle and simply irresponsible. The EMCs involved in Power4Georgians ought to take a hard look at their involvement in this plan."
But Alford maintains that Brown is just one voting member on the Power4Georgians board and his indictment is inconsequential in the consortium's plans to construct Plant Washington. As for claims that Brown is leading the Power4Georgians effort, he said, "When this thing first started, someone has to sign the legal documents to get it started... He's one board member (out of five). He has an equal vote as anyone else."
The chairman of the Power4Georgians board is Central Georgia EMC President George Weaver, Alford said.
Interestingly, a settlement in the civil suit called for Brown to announce his retirement on or before Feb. 28, when his current employment contract expires. Whether that will still happen, Kelly would only say, "The board has a process in place and has actively sought external and internal resumes."
If Brown does retire, his current role in Power4Georgians would cease, Alford said, since he would no longer be an active employee of the one of the co-ops building the plant. However, it's apparent Cobb EMC would remain involved in Plant Washington regardless of Brown.
"With regard to Plant Washington, the board supports the project," co-op spokeswoman Carol Cookerly said.
Environmental groups, though, say Cobb EMC customers will be "socked with financial liabilities that will come" from building Plant Washington and another proposed coal plant near Fitzgerald in Ben Hill County, according to a joint press release send Jan. 7.
"No coal plant has commenced construction in over two years, and dozens have been cancelled due to concerns that they are not sound financial investments," the release stated. "In fact, four of the original ten EMCs have pulled out of Brown's Plant Washington project, citing these exact concerns, yet under Dwight Brown's leadership, Cobb EMC has proceeded."
Kelly, however, maintains that building Plant Washington will be cheaper for ratepayers than investing in nuclear or solar energy.
Additionally, Alford said the reason the other four EMCs dropped out of the project is because the original plan was to build two sites, Plant Washington and Plant Ben Hill. The latter plant has remained only in a conceptual planning phase while Washington goes through its permitting process. Alford expects that when permits to build Plant Ben Hill are issued, other power providers, which could include the EMCs that dropped out of Power4Georgians, could step forward to seek ownership in that plant again.
But Bonnie Jones, spokeswoman for Jackson EMC, one of the cooperatives that dropped out of building Plant Washington, said Jackson EMC's reason for getting out of the project was "a matter of an uncertain regulatory environment and a lot of other issues."
The other three electric cooperatives that dropped out of Power4Georgians more than a year ago are GreyStone Power Corporation in Douglasville, Excelsior EMC in Metter, and Diverse Power in LaGrange.
Gary Miller, president and CEO of GreyStone, said that cooperative's decision to step away from the project was based on possible changes in Washington, D.C., in regards to coal and environmental regulations, and uncertainty in the regulatory environment.
However, he also said coal remains a necessary and viable resource for power and co-op officials "look forward to the building of Plant Washington." He said purchasing power from Plant Washington "in the future may be a viable option."
Calls seeking comment from representatives of the remaining co-ops that dropped out went unreturned.
The remaining six co-ops involved in Power4Georgians are Cobb, Pataula, Snapping Shoals, Central Georgia, Washington County and Upson EMCs.
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The judge in the first case must have been in bed or great friend of Brown's.
And there is the question of PROCORE, the actual work force of the EMC and was part of the first trials, the red headed step child and and prob paid far less than the elite EMC employees.
ID look at the board members to see who owns stock or a coal brakerage?? I bet there is and I bet Brown and his wife were gifted tons of the coal plant interest as well as some board members.
Great recap and enlightenment for EMC members ! We members have been much worse treated than simply conned - financially raped, pillaged and plundered by Brown and his Gang!
Free advice to Brown and his partners.
Before the REA (Rural Electric Administration) was established in 1935, huge swaths of the US were without electricity. If you lived in a rural area and wanted "electrification," you had to foot the bill for all the infrastructure needed to get it to you. Most farmers couldn't come close to affording that kind of expense. But within just a few years of its creation, the REA had helped rural communities set up hundreds of Electric Membership Cooperatives. By pooling their resources and buying power into these co-ops, over a quarter of a million rural homeowners were able to "electrify" their homes by 1940.
These early co-ops were small, and truly were governed cooperatively by their members, so for legal purposes they were pretty much treated like any other co-op. They were left alone to govern themselves. If there was a problem with corruption or mismanagement or anything else, everyone knew it pretty quickly and it was dealt with by the members. Any kind of regulation would have been considered ridiculous in that environment, and rightly so.
Now many formerly rural EMCs are in the middle of suburban sprawl areas. They can easily become massive, and that same freedom to self-regulate that made early EMCs so successful can provide just the environment of isolation from accountability that the ethically challenged and morally creative love to leverage to enrich themselves.
The Public Service Commission? No authority over EMCs. Local government? Nope. County? State? Federal? Nope. As far as any level of government is concerned, EMCs are invisible.
As you may have noticed from Brown's indictment, EMC members, the media, county government, local recipients of Cobb Energy / Cobb EMC's largesse -- almost everybody -- works under the assumption that Cobb EMC is just like any other business. Roy Barnes, for example, is going out of his way to promote that misconception by expressing mock good ol' boy outrage that a local business leader would be treated so unfairly for simply doing a good job of managing his company's assets.
A lot of people believe this line, because they have never understood that Cobb EMC was never supposed to take the cooperation out of its core operating domain as a co-op. A real EMC is not much like a "classic" public or private business at all. But Cobb EMC was able to walk away from what it was supposed to be, because the final ingredient that enabled Brown, Alford, and the Board to bake their private cake -- then eat it too -- was a largely uninterested, over-worked membership with a poor understanding of what the co-op was supposed to be and what its responsibility was to hold it to those standards.
For years, Cobb EMC's leadership team was emboldened by low member attendance at meetings and general lack of interest in (or concern about) co-op activities. We were asleep, and before we knew it the fox had emptied the henhouse.
That's about to change.
Educate yourselves, members. Go to the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) website and read the Electric Consumer Bill or Rights. Then go read the Cobb EMC bylaws and you'll experience firsthand what it feels like to realize you've been conned.
This is obscene! How does this happen with all the oversight, transparency, regulators, etc. that are supposed to be in place to protect the public?
We need to take back the EMC. Throw the board out. Get rid of the board attorney who has been supposedly advising the board that their actions are legal and let the state bar deal with him. Stop the hemorrhaging of "OUR" money.
Where are the agencies (regulatory and otherwise) that should be looking out for us? Surely there are laws keeping thieves from stealing our money.
There will never be any transparency concerning Cobb Energy as long as Brown and his board are involved.
We need Cobb EMC to be open, responsive, and fiscally sound for its members. No spin off corporations and the members need to vote on actions such as Plant Washington.
Speaking of "little", let's look at relative consortium member sizes:
Cobb EMC: 200,000
Snapping Shoals EMC: 95,000
Central Georgia EMC: 100,000
Washington EMC: 15,000
Upson EMC: 6,600
Cobb EMC is almost as large as all the other member EMCs COMBINED. It would be surprising if it ends up shouldering much less than 50% of the cost burden for these coal plants. And, since Alford is still using 2008 dollars when discussing the cost of a plant that won't be finished until 2016 or 2017, I think we can assume the $2.1 billion price tag is going to go up.
...and is a subsidiary of Cobb Energy...
...and was "retained" without any sort of bidding process, in spite of having no prior experience in coal plant development...
Plant Washington is all about personal enrichment for a small group of insiders: Alford, Brown, Hugh Tarbutton, and others who will eventually also receive no-bid contracts to continue development and construction (should plans for the plant go forward).
And it should be clear to all by now that Cookerly, Kelly, and the Cobb EMC Board are always quick to claim transparency as long as they get to choose the topic, the timing, and who asks the question. This much is clear: We Cobb EMC members will be paying for Plant Washington for a long, long time... and dearly.