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Proposed Kennedy’s Gas Plant Draws Scrutiny Over Flooding, Equity and Cost Risks
Summary
Witnesses raised site-specific concerns about a proposed large combined-cycle plant at Kennedy’s on the Edisto River — including flood risk, community health impacts from prior coal operations, pipeline and transmission upgrades and uncertain cost consequences for ratepayers.
A proposed combined‑cycle gas plant at Kennedy’s on the Edisto River drew sustained criticism at a Senate Energy Subcommittee hearing, where witnesses warned the site has discrete risks, unclear cost estimates and would sit near a historically burdened community.
Robbie Maynor, who said he lives “about 2 miles upstream from the proposed site,” told the panel the Kennedy’s community has lived with pollution from a now‑retired coal plant and nearby Interstate 95. “Residents in Kennedy's have had to live with pollution from that coal plant for 50 years,” Maynor said. He added that utilities are seeking both legislative authority for a joint plant and rollbacks of permitting protections.
Conservation witnesses and analysts said the combination of local site risk and the size of the proposed project magnify potential harms. Taylor Allred with the Coastal Conservation League said a single, very large plant would concentrate discrete flood and transmission risks and argued for portfolio diversification that includes storage and solar: “The biggest risk is just putting all your eggs in 1 basket with 1 gigantic power plant in 1 site that’s got its own discrete risks.”
Technical and cost questions highlighted at the hearing included the plant’s pipeline needs, transmission upgrade costs and how siting and IRP treatment differ. Hamilton Davis, a solar and storage developer, summarized a Telos Energy transmission impact analysis that his group commissioned: limiting a Kennedy’s plant to roughly 600 megawatts and adding battery storage at an alternate site could save Dominion customers about $231 million compared with a larger single site build, he said.
Witnesses also noted regulatory limits: integrated resource plans are forward‑looking planning documents and “cannot be viewed as tacit approval of the project,” Robbie Maynor said, citing a Public Service Commission statement about Santee Cooper’s IRP. Maynor and others urged the Legislature not to pre‑endorse a specific mega‑site or a joint‑venture arrangement before the commission has reviewed explicit siting applications and full cost estimates.
End note: Senators heard repeated requests for full cost transparency — including pipeline and transmission price tags — before any statutory language effectively endorses a single, very large plant at Kennedy’s. Witnesses suggested smaller units, diversified siting or pairing generation with storage as lower‑risk paths.
