2001 to 2014
Key People
A volunteer organization in a county of about twenty thousand people, and the coalition that formed around it.
Sevier Citizens for Clean Air and Water was a volunteer organization. Almost everyone named here was doing this on top of a job or in retirement, at their own expense, in a county of roughly twenty thousand people.
Dick Cumiskey
Co-founder and president of Sevier Citizens for Clean Air and Water.
Cumiskey led the organization through the permit challenges, the county zoning fight, and the Proposition One campaign. In the appeal decided December 4, 2009, he and Jim Kennon appeared before the Utah Supreme Court pro se, as members of Save Our Air and Resources, and won. They wrote their own briefs and argued the case without attorneys.
He was quoted in state and national coverage of the county zoning decisions. After Kennon’s death he became president, and he led the group through the natural gas permit fight, submitting twenty-one pages of public comment on that proposal before the 2014 Court of Appeals decision. By his own account in early 2013 he was putting about thirty hours a week into the appeal.
Jim Kennon
Founding president of Sevier Citizens for Clean Air and Water. Died before 2011.
James O. Kennon was among the residents who began questioning the plant in 2001, and he became the group’s most widely quoted public voice. He argued the health case at county meetings and in the press, and he was the named petitioner in Kennon v. Air Quality Board, the pro se appeal that produced the December 2009 ruling on the expired permit.
He did not live to see the rest of it. He died before 2011, less than two years after the ruling. SCCAW’s own account describes him as “the late Jim Kennon,” and Cumiskey, writing in 2013, put it this way: “By this time Jim Kennon had left this life and I became the president of SCCAW.”
When we founded Sevier Citizens for Clean Air and Water in 2001, you didn’t mention the Sierra Club around here.
Kennon’s account of how much changed over the eight years included a detail that says as much about the campaign as any court ruling: the Sevier County Commission added fifteen minutes of public comment to every meeting agenda in response to the group’s persistence.
He did not start it alone. Cindy Roberts read his letter to the editor, called him, and the two of them founded the organization together.
Cindy Roberts
Co-founder of Sevier Citizens for Clean Air and Water.
A third-generation alfalfa farmer from Sigurd, Roberts read Jim Kennon’s letter to the editor of the Richfield paper after the county announced the plant, and called him. The two of them started the organization together and began convening meetings in parks around the county.
The Sierra Club, writing in December 2009, called her a first-time organizer. That is the whole point of her. She had not done this before, she lived on the land the plant would have sat beside, and she picked up the phone.
Save Our Air and Resources
A separate local group formed during the campaign. Kennon and Cumiskey brought the Utah Supreme Court appeal as SOAR members, and the case is sometimes docketed as Kennon SOAR v. Air Quality Board.
The coalition
Utah Chapter of the Sierra Club. Tim Wagner ran the Utah Smart Energy Campaign, which handled statewide press, tracked the company’s promotional efforts, and turned people out to county Planning Commission hearings. The Sierra Club was the petitioner in the 2006 standing case that made the rest of the litigation possible, and in the 2009 companion ruling on Best Available Control Technology.
Grand Canyon Trust. Brought the regional case, including the visibility and air quality stakes for Capitol Reef National Park and the wider Colorado Plateau. The Trust was a co-petitioner with the Sierra Club in the 2006 standing decision.
Joro Walker and John Pace represented the petitioners in the 2009 Sierra Club appeal. Walker worked for Western Resource Advocates. This is the piece that a rural volunteer group could not have bought.
Joel Ban appeared for Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment as amicus in that appeal.
Marcus Taylor, a local attorney, handled the legal filings for SCCAW’s challenge to the natural gas permit beginning in early 2013, with the group doing most of the underlying research itself.
Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment. Doctors from the group presented at community meetings, and it appeared as amicus in the 2009 Sierra Club appeal.
Utah Moms for Clean Air. Local organizing on the health case. Shaunna Bastian, who lived about a quarter mile from the proposed site, was among those quoted in state coverage.
Brigham Young University. Researchers and professors presented scientific analysis at community meetings, which Kennon credited with giving residents the confidence to speak at hearings.
Sevier County voters. 4,692 of them passed Proposition One on November 4, 2008.
On the other side
Named for the historical record, without characterization.
The plant was proposed by NEVCO Energy Company LLC of Bountiful, Utah, through its project entity Sevier Power Company. Pat Shea, a former director of the Bureau of Land Management, worked for NEVCO and spoke for the project publicly. In the 2009 litigation the company was represented by Fred W. Finlinson, Brian W. Burnett, and James D. Gilson. Michael G. Jenkins and Martin K. Banks appeared for the intervenor, PacifiCorp.
The Utah Division of Air Quality issued the 2004 approval order under Executive Secretary Richard W. Sprott. The Air Quality Board was represented on appeal by Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff with assistant attorneys general Fred G. Nelson, Paul McConkie, and Christian C. Stephens.
Kennon v. Air Quality Board, 2009 UT 77, was authored by Chief Justice Christine Durham, joined by Associate Chief Justice Durrant and Justices Wilkins, Parrish, and Nehring.