The Wyoming Tribune Eagle recently reported on a bill before the Legislature’s Corporations, Elections, and Political Subdivisions Committee that would allow Wyoming municipalities to build and operate power plants, which could become another source of revenue. It remains obscure while in committee but will come before the full legislature in 2025, likely bringing with it some controversy.
“I asked the legislature to study giving us the authority to do this,” Mayor Patrick Collins of Cheyenne told the Enterprise. He credited the original idea to Tom Segrave, a city councilman from Cheyenne who spotted a community solar project at a Fort Collins landfill and liked the idea.
Collins described the property where Cheyenne proposes to build a 30-40 Megawatt solar generating facility of its own as “blighted” – or good for little else because a closed and capped landfill lies beneath the surface.
Cody Mayor Matt Hall, who is also the President of the Wyoming Association of Municipalities, told the Enterprise that there was a law passed back in the 1970s prohibiting power generation by electric utilities, but some projects already in existence were grandfathered – a coal plant run by Gillette, for instance.
WAM Executive Director Ashley Harpstreith told the Tribune Eagle that all parties in her association are supportive of the bill.
In opposition to the idea, Senator Charles Scott (R-Casper) said the concept “fits the classic definition of socialism, since it is public ownership of the means of production.” Scott expressed other reservations with the project, saying “I voted against the bill because I think Cheyenne is getting into something [power generation] that they don’t understand.”
Scott described the project as a major investment, a complicated arrangement with a local utility, and a complicated arrangement with a major power customer who may not stay around as long as it will take to pay off the bond required to build the project.
Scott noted that while the federal government is already in the power-generation business, few municipalities are. He referenced Cody’s own local Shoshone Power Plant located at the base of the Buffalo Bill Dam, completed in 1992 and operated by the Bureau of Reclamation.
Efforts to reach the Bureau for comment or statistics about the Shoshone Power Plant were unsuccessful.
The major power customer (s) in Cheyenne alluded to by Scott was outlined by Collins as three Microsoft campuses and a Meta/Facebook facility. Collins also noted that Eagle Claw and Magpul manufacture there – each increasing demand for electric power.
“LEADS has done a wonderful job of marketing Cheyenne,” Collins said of its economic development agency.
One point of agreement among Collins, Hall and Scott was that the legislation, if passed, would require the municipality in question to gain the approval of the major private power generator in the area, in Cheyenne’s case Black Hills Energy.
“We did not want to be a competitor, we want to partner with BHE,” Collins explained.
While making good use of blighted land is an attractive idea, Scott’s concern about public competition with private business is valid. If a power plant could be viable revenue for a city, they certainly could be for a private concern as well. One wonders why the city could not lease the blighted land to a private power generation concern instead.
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