Gov. Kathleen Sebelius promised environmentalists Tuesday a veto awaited the controversial bill permitting a $3.5 million expansion of a coal-fired electric plant in southwest Kansas.

She told 100 "Kansas Clean Energy Day" activists at the Statehouse a veto awaited Senate Bill 327 when it arrived in her second-floor office.

"I can pretty well assure you what's going to happen to it," she said.

Sebelius and Lt. Gov. Mark Parkinson, both Democrats, said they were working to shield the veto from override by the Republican-dominated House and Senate.

The Senate passed the bill by the necessary two-thirds margin to trump the governor's opposition to the project at Sunflower Electric Power Corp.'s plant outside Holcomb. The House fell nine votes shy of the 84 needed to overcome the governor.

House Speaker Melvin Neufeld, R-Ingalls, said he intended to negotiate deals on other legislative issues to guarantee an override in that chamber.

Parkinson said behind-the-scenes maneuvering made the outcome uncertain. Pro-coal interests are investing heavily in the lobbying effort, he said.

"I don't know if we're going to win this thing or not," he said. "Why legislators are supporting Wyoming coal and Colorado energy while putting at risk the economy and health of Kansans is beyond me."

Cooperatives investing in the project are from Colorado, Texas and Kansas.

Last fall, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment rejected an application from Sunflower for an air permit needed for construction. KDHE Secretary Rod Bremby, who is scheduled to testify Thursday in Washington, D.C., before a U.S. House committee on global warming, cited the pollution risk of burning more coal in the state.

Sunflower filed a civil lawsuit and launched a campaign in the Legislature to reverse Bremby during the current 2008 session.

Lee Boughey, a spokesman with Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association of Colorado, a partner with Sunflower in the project, said KDHE acted outside the bound of Kansas law by rejecting the permit based on CO2 emissions.

The bill clarifies the permit situation and sets appropriate restraints on the KDHE secretary's authority to arbitrarily set rules, he said.

Sebelius and Parkinson said a major deficiency of the Holcomb bill was the lack of recognition that Kansas has untapped potential to generate energy from wind.

"We have an opportunity as Kansans to explore these choices fully and an expectation to be responsible with our assets," the governor said.

Boughey said cooperatives involved in the Holcomb project were buying into wind power, but that source is inconsistent. He said coal offered power cooperatives the most reliable source of "baseload" electricity at an economical cost.

The article can also be found at http://www.cjonline.com/stories/031208/sta_256083306.shtml