When the four remaining utilities behind the proposed Big Stone II power plant announced Monday that they were killing the project, it signaled a great victory for the electrical customers, for the environment and for the organizations and people who battled against long odds to defeat a bad idea.

Not long after the then seven utilities announced they wanted to build a dirty coal-fired power plant just across Big Stone Lake in South Dakota, numerous environmental and clean energy groups recognized it as a bad idea that would add conventional and global warming pollutants into the air.

Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, Fresh Energy, Izaak Walton League of America, Union of Concerned Scientists and Wind on the Wires joined forces and resources to fight it first in South Dakota and then in Minnesota. Each time there was a decision, the groups were on the losing end.

“We couldn’t handle losing to people who were supporting such an obviously bad project,” said MCEA attorney Beth Goodpaster, who led the fight. “We were convinced we were right and wanted to keep going. More of the people started to agree with us and then we got new opportunities when project partners dropped out, echoing some of the same things we had been saying.”

That was in September 2007, when Great River Energy and Southern Minnesota Municipal Power Agency pulled out, forcing the remaining utilities to go through the regulatory process again in Minnesota with a scaled down 500 to 580 megawatt proposal.

This time, the administrative law judges recommended that the utilities not receive the certificate of need for the transmission lines into Minnesota because they had not proven the need for anymore than 160 megawatts of power and they had not proven it was the least cost option for the customers.

“They were trying to build a coal-fired power plant in the teeth of a carbon-restrained world and that was too costly and too risky,” Michael Noble, executive director of Fresh Energy told the St. Paul Pioneer Press. “What this should tell you more than anything is that the era of coal-fired power plants is over.”

Monday’s announcement that the $1.6 billion power plant was dead brought many emotions to those who have spent more than four long years and lot of money fighting it.

“Relief, closure, now we can move on,” Goodpaster said, summing up her feelings. “I was happy and satisfied and glad that we finally prevailed. Every once in awhile, the little guy wins. These utilities were stubborn, but persistence won out.”

While the four remaining utilities cited the recession and uncertainty over how federal legislation would add to the operating cost of Big Stone II, they did say they had plenty of electrical capacity through 2015. And a spokesman for Missouri River Energy Services, one of the last remaining utilities, told the St. Paul Pioneer Press they would begin investing heavily in energy-efficiency programs and more wind power. 

That is exactly the alternatives MCEA and its allies had been recommending from the beginning and MCEA is pleased they are moving in that direction. Goodpaster told the utilities as much.

“I said, ‘I know we’re the last people you would come to for help, but if you want to build transmission lines for renewables, we would be there to help. If it’s feasible we will support it,’ ’’ Goodpaster said. “Big Stone was just in the way.”

In addition to the five groups who fought the power plant formally before the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission and in the South Dakota courts, other organizations rallied grassroots support. Chief among those groups were Clean-Up our River Environment, Clean Water Action and North Star Chapter of the Sierra Club.