NEWS
MONDAY, AUGUST 15,2005
UTILITY
Power plant agreement
BY JOHN MILBURN THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
TOPEKA - Directors of a western Kansas utility have approved an agreement with a Colorado electric cooperative to construct and operate two new coal-fired power plants in Finney County.
The agreement between Sunflower Electric Power Corp., based in Hays, and Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association Inc., of Westminster, Colo., calls for the construction of two 600-megawatt generating plants at Sunflower's Holcomb Station in southwest Kansas.
Sunflower responded to a request for proposals issued by Tri-State less than a year ago.
"That option operationally and economically was the most feasible of the options that we analyzed," Van Someren said.
Van Someren said Tri-State
would invest $2.5 billion in the Holcomb plants, plus $700 million for as much as 550 miles of transmission lines to a site near Lamar, Colo.
He said Tri-State also is developing a $1.8 billion plant in Colorado to keep up with growing demand in the Front Range, the area of the state east of the Rocky Mountains that includes Boulder, Colorado Springs and Denver. Demand in that area is increasing at a rate of 100 megawatts a year, he said. One megawatt is enough power to supply 400 to 1,000 homes.
"The whole West is in a generation deficit," Van Someren said.
Sunflower has been looking to expand its operations for the past five years, said senior manager Steve Miller.
The plants would be built alongside Sunflower's 360 megawatt coal plant in Holcomb. Miller said the site was designed in the 1980s to handle additional units. Sunflower has secured all necessary permits.
Power will be moved through new 345,000-volt transmission lines stretching from the Holcomb plant into eastern Colorado.
"We recognized long ago that our site was well-positioned for transmission," Miller said Thursday. "In essence, we're extending the Western power grid east."
Sunflower expects the project to create hundreds of new jobs during construction and operation.
"All of us have worked hard for a very long time to get to this point in the project," said Sunflower's president and chief executive officer Earl Watkins.
Rosemary Foreman, spokeswoman for the Kansas Corporation Commission, said the
agreement to build the power plants doesn't require the regulatory agency's approval. However, the companies may need KCC's authority to place transmission lines.
Sunflower is a regional wholesale power supplier with a system of 595 megawatts of natural gas and coal plants. It supplies power to six member cooperatives and 118,000 customers in western Kansas. It also sells power to regional utilities in western Kansas and 10 states.
Sunflower isn't the only Kansas utility looking at building new power plants.
Topeka-based Westar Energy Inc., the state's largest electric utility, wants to build two natural gas-powered units to add between 150 megawatts and 200 megawatts of capacity by 2008. It also wants to build a coal-fired plant with at least 800 megawatts of capacity by 2013.
Despite the new plan's higher costs, Student Senate believes the new choice is a good one for domestic students.
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1A
Nick Sterner, student body president, said because the new plan was designed for only the University it can offer benefits above the state-sponsored Regents' plan.
Health
"You'll save money in a lot of different ways," the Shawnee senior said. "I'm very happy about it."
But international students are in the dark about the new plan.
International students may get their health insurance from the University, whether through the Regents' plan, the new Senate plan or another plan specifically designed for international students. They also may use coverage from their home country or an off-campus plan if the coverage meets the requirements of the University.
Javier Portillo, of Minga Guazu,
Paraguay, just transferred to the
University after one year at the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Like all international students,
Portillo needs health insurance
to attend school at the University, but Portillo said he wasn't aware of the new plan.
Other international students, like Vinod Muralidhar, a graduate student in computer science from Coimbatore, India, didn't know about the new plan.
Muralidhar said he got his
Luis Parrieria, insurance coordinator for International Student and Scholars Services, said he tried to point out the best things about each plan to students.
health insurance from the University, but he wasn't sure which plan he used.
Parriera said Senate's plan provided only slightly better benefits than the plan offered for international students. He said he didn't think too many international students would opt for the Senate plan.
Though the new plan may look unattractive to international students, Parriera said it could be excellent for other students.
"This plan has much better coverage than the Regents' plan, and, for the domestic students, it is worth the premium's difference," Parriera said.
—Edited by Alison Peterson
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN 9A
COURT
State requests videotape from BTK psychologist
WICHITA — Preparing for next week's sentencing of Dennis Rader, the confessed BTK serial killer who terrorized Wichita for years, the state wants a copy of a neuropsychologist's video-taped interview with him.
In papers filed Wednesday, Kevin O'Connor, the deputy district attorney for Sedgwick County, said the interview was scheduled to be broadcasted Friday night on "Dateline NBC." The network has been promoting the interview conducted by Harvard neuropsychologist Robert Mendoza as "the first exclusive look inside the mind of the man."
Mendoza is a founding partner in Cambridge Forensic Consultants of Chestnut Hill, Mass., which Rader's attorneys consulted with in trying to build a defense for him.
"Several requests of counsel for the above information have been rejected or ignored," O'Connor said.
In his motion filed with the Sedgwick County District Court, O'Connor said prosecutors are entitled to all notes, reports, psychological test results and information about fees paid to Mendoza for his services.
Defense lawyers agreed to provide any information they had from Mendoza's evaluation, but they said they did not have any videotapes that may have been made during the process.
communications resumed last year, eventually leading to Rader's arrest.
Rader, arrested in February, pleaded guilty on June 27 to killing 10 people in the Wichita area between 1974 and 1991. In communications to police and the news media, he had given himself the nickname BTK, which stands for "Bind, Torture, Kill." After more than two decades of silence, the cryptic
O'Connor said in his motion that the videotaped interview was conducted after Rader entered his pleas. He said that if the defense calls Mendoza for testimony at the sentencing hearing, the state should be able to examine any reports and tapes produced during Rader's evaluation.
In written excerpts provided to The Associated Press by "Dateline," Rader explained the sexual fantasies that he says motivated him to kill.
"You have to have the control, which is the bonding. That's been a big thing with me. My sexual fantasy is of ... if I'm going to kill a victim or do something to the victim, is having them bound and tied. In my dreams, I had what they called torture chambers. And to relieve your sexual fantasies you have to go to the kill," he said.
"Dateline" also quoted Rader as telling Mendoza that he saw his victims as objects.
"I had more satisfaction building up to it and afterwards than I did the actual killing of the person," he said.
Rader also said there were "a lot of lucky people out there" he considered killing but didn't.
"I can't stop it ... it controls me. ... That's probably the reason we're sitting here. You know, if I could just say, 'No, I don't want to do this and go crawl into a hole.' But it's driving me."
It was not clear how NBC obtained the videotape it has been promoting. A spokeswoman said it is network policy not to discuss the newsgathering process. A call left at Mendoza's office Thursday was not returned.
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