Abstract

Smog over the Great Plains

The article focuses on the pollution problem generated by different power plants of the big power electric companies in the U.S. West. Ten investor-owned public power companies met and formed an association called WEST (Western Energy Supply Transmission Associates). Under the guise of being the benevolent suppliers of a galloping demand for electric power, WEST members, without fanfare, started to draw contracts for a network of coal-fired plants on the Colorado Plateau. By the time environmentalists realized what was happening, WEST had grown to twenty-four member companies and into one of the biggest electric-power combines in the country. Its members had either built, were building, or had on the drawing boards six of the largest fossil fuel power plants in the world, with the potential to turn the crisp air of the West into a major pollution problem. One of the factors that makes the WEST combine so difficult to stop now is that the contracts the companies have drawn are scrupulously legal.