Alliant Energy has submitted its air permit application to Linn County Public Health for the proposed Morgan Valley Energy Center, the natural gas-fired power plant planned near the intersection of U.S. 30 and Benton-Linn Road in western Linn County.
The application is available for public review, and additional information related to the filing can be found through the Iowa Department of Natural Resources’ EASY Air system.
The submission follows Alliant’s July 16 filing of a rezoning application with Linn County, which requested that the roughly 160-acre project site be rezoned from Agricultural to Exclusive Use-2, a designation required under the county’s development code for gas-fired generating facilities. The plant itself would occupy about 55 acres of that site, with the remainder expected to return to agricultural use once the facility is operating. Alliant had indicated at the time that it expected to file the air permit application within the week.
The proposed plant would include three simple-cycle natural gas combustion turbines with a combined capacity of about 720 megawatts. Because of its scale, the project requires a Title V air quality permit under the Clean Air Act and is subject to review under the federal Prevention of Significant Deterioration program, handled jointly by Linn County Public Health and the Iowa DNR. Once the application is deemed complete, formal technical review will begin, including air dispersion modeling and a public comment period of at least 30 days on any draft permit.
In a statement, Alliant Energy said the filing lays out the engineering and technical basis it believes shows the facility can meet the public health and environmental standards required by law, and that the materials are meant to give regulators an independent basis for review. The company said the application draws on precedent from dozens of similar facilities nationwide that have gone through the same permitting process and been approved under comparable federal criteria, and it pointed to its history operating regulated energy facilities under state and federal oversight as evidence it can meet the same bar here.
The filing comes after a June 24 information session in Cedar Rapids drew more than 100 attendees, many of whom raised concerns about air quality modeling, health impacts and the choice of a simple-cycle rather than combined-cycle turbine design. University of Iowa professor Peter Thorne, a former chair of the EPA Science Advisory Board, questioned at that meeting why Alliant chose a simple-cycle design over combined-cycle technology, which he said would improve efficiency by about 30%.
Save Morgan Valley, the grassroots group opposing the project, has said it will continue pressing for transparency and independent scrutiny as the rezoning, air permit and Iowa Utilities Commission reviews move forward.
