St. Louis, MO, Feb. 14, 2007---Applications for use of the $5 million for project enhancements at or near AmerenUE’s Taum Sauk Plant totaled more than 100, and the amounts listed equaled more than $50 million as individuals and organizations filed their recommendations by the Feb. 1 deadline.
Submitted recommendations can be found on www.ameren.com/taumsauk. If a recommendation is not on the site and was postmarked by the Feb. 1 deadline, please email Kathy@ForresterGroup.com. Her phone number is 417.864.6444 ext.115.
Feb. 15 will mark the fourth public meeting for a seven-person independent advisory panel charged with evaluating the recommendations. The meeting is set for 6 p.m. at Lesterville High School, State Highway 21 in Lesterville. Meetings are open to the public and include presentations on submitted recommendations.
In December, AmerenUE announced that the company is soliciting recommendations for using the $5 million. By Feb. 28, AmerenUE will submit the final plan proposed by the panel to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) staff for review and approval.
Panel members include the following community leaders: Patty Barton, Greg Batson, Chauncy Buchheit, Jim Chadbourne, Wanda Corder, Don Goodman, and Caroline Sheehy. Non-voting advisors to the panel are Reynolds County Presiding Commissioner Donald Barnes; State Sen. Kevin Engler (R-District 3); State Representative J. C. Kuessner (D.-District 152); and Iron County Presiding Commissioner Terry Nichols.
The Forrester Group—veteran Missouri-based environmental management consultants--are facilitating the process and have been on the ground for several months, providing outreach to the community.
AmerenUE is a subsidiary of St. Louis-based Ameren Corporation. Ameren companies serve 2.4 million electric customers and one million natural gas customers in a 64,000-square-mile area of Missouri and Illinois.
BACKGROUND:
Built in 1963, AmerenUE’s Taum Sauk is a “pumped-storage” hydroelectric plant. It stored water from the Black River in an upper reservoir, built atop1,590-foot-high Proffit Mountain, and released the water to generate electricity when power is needed. The water flowed down a mile-long tunnel inside the mountain, turning turbine-generators to produce electricity. When power demand was low, the same turbines ran in reverse to pump water back to the upper reservoir.
On December 14, 2005, the AmerenUE Taum Sauk Plant experienced a breach in its 1.5 billion-gallon upper reservoir that caused flooding in the Johnson’s Shut-Ins area.
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