Welcome to the Twilight Zone of Arkansas environmental regulation. The Department of Environmental Quality held a hearing last night for a wastewater discharge permit for a coal-fired power plant, SWEPCO’s Turk Plant, that’s probably at the billion-dollar-construction mark already.

ADEQ surely will roll over on this anyway. But the Sierra Club was there, arguing that the water — from elevated temperature and toxins — would contaminate the Little River.

Advertisement