NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Debra Teufel with the Hutchinson/Reno County Chamber of Commerce told Hutch Post that 2025 will be a busy year laying the groundwork for the project to expand Evergy's power generation capacity that is coming to Reno County in 2030.
"In October, we were able to option 281 acres that we then assigned the option to Evergy," Teufel said. "Evergy is not closed on that property yet, but that is their intention to work on their due diligence steps, and then they will ultimately close on the purchase of that 281 acres. So what they are currently doing and that plan also to recap is to invest approximately a billion dollars in a new combined cycle natural gas electric generation plant that will at full operation employ about 40 people. It's going to, in the short term, create about 500 construction jobs over the next three to four years. And so in planning for that, Evergy has some permits that they must apply for, as well as doing some due diligence on the land. And they've applied for their air permit with the state. They also have applied for an interconnect agreement to the grid."
One of the upcoming steps is what are called good neighbor agreements, which will allow neighbors to receive compensation from Evergy for some of the required infrastructure upgrades.
"They are continuing to do real estate assessment along the McNew Road corridor and the adjacent parcels to that property," Teufel said. "They expect during the first quarter of 2025 to be working with the neighbors on what that neighborhood impact is going to be, and then I expect once they have that kind of in place, they will request annexation. The reason for that annexation is related mostly then to the utilities that need to be supplied to the site, such as water and sewer services, as well as fire protection and those kinds of things, so they'll be working with the cities. Right now, it's not in any one city. It's just outside of South Hutchinson and Hutchinson. But they've expressed the desire for a plan for annexation into the city of Hutchinson. We've been at the table with the two cities in the county, kind of talking about how that impacts the McNew corridor, as well as on down to ultimately the site that we're calling the Kimball Industrial Site that is at Mills Avenue."
McNew will need to be upgraded to make the project happen.
"Today, McNew Road is a dirt road and it's out in a township," Teufel said. "That's another reason that the annexation needs to happen because, and probably if it's, let's suppose it's annexed into Hutchinson, Hutchinson would actually annex the roadway as well. Evergy is part of a condition of that request for annexation, that's where some negotiation will happen on whose responsibility will it be to upgrade the road. In conversations in August, as they were preparing to make site decisions, they said they have been known to improve roads to their projects in the past. I expect that that will be part of that conversation between Evergy and the cities about whose responsibility improvement of McNew will be, but Evergy has expressed that they know that that will be part of their responsibility."
The hearings for state regulatory approval will likely happen in August 2025, with a potential start of construction as early as late 2026, but the plant not going online until 2030.