OMAHA — The Omaha Public Power District delayed a vote this month to move forward on a decade-old plan to transfer two coal units at a North Omaha power plant to natural gas.

The delay came a week after Nebraska’s attorney general sued the public utility.

OPPD’s elected board of directors had scheduled an Oct. 15 vote on whether to restart negotiations on a contract to install natural gas burners at two North Omaha Station units currently using coal. Those coal units have been running since the 1960s, while three other natural gas units, which switched away from coal in 2016, have operated since the 1950s.

OPPD has planned to “modernize” North Omaha Station since 2014 by retiring its oldest remaining natural gas units in North Omaha and ending coal burning. North Omaha residents have long petitioned for the change, largely citing health concerns, including a higher prevalence of respiratory issues.

Nebraska is the only state with exclusively publicly owned utilities providing power.

‘Thoughtful Deliberation, Not Indecision’

At the Oct. 15 meeting, OPPD Director Mary Spurgeon, board vice president, said the decision to delay the vote came after “due diligence” and as the elected representatives had evaluated “new information” related to the North Omaha power plant over several months.

“The decision to remove this item reflects thoughtful deliberation, not indecision,” Spurgeon said at the time.

Spurgeon explained some of the challenges OPPD has faced that “have changed the factual basis underlying earlier decisions” about the North Omaha transition. Among those were a “complex and evolving energy landscape,” such as rapid demand growth for electricity, new reliability requirements, extended infrastructure timelines and significant inflationary pressures.

OPPD in 2019 adopted a goal to achieve “net-zero” carbon emissions by 2050, at a time when electricity demand was growing fairly flat year over year. Since 2019, OPPD’s peak load has grown by more than 400 megawatts year-round, and the utility anticipates more than 2,000 megawatts of additional energy needs over the coming years, Spurgeon said.

“We will continue to evaluate all options through the lens of reliability, affordability and the well-being of our customers and community,” Spurgeon said. “We remain committed to making decisions that maintain the long-term health of the system so we may continue to power the lives of those we serve.”

Pending Lawsuit

Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers filed a lawsuit Oct. 9 seeking to stop OPPD’s planned North Omaha Station transition, as well as stop the utility from pursuing any “environmental justice” or other goals, including the net-zero ambitions, if such policies would jeopardize electricity affordability and reliability.

Hilgers pointed to state law that he argues mandates customer affordability and reliability as the chief goals of public utilities. He said environmental goals can still be managed, but only if affordability and reliability are prioritized.

“We should not be taking one electron off the grid,” Hilgers said when announcing the lawsuit.

Hilgers’ office declined to comment on OPPD’s delay. OPPD declined to comment for this story, citing the pending litigation. The case has been assigned to Douglas County District Court Judge Timothy Burns.

North Omaha Residents Respond

Some members of the public and one state lawmaker who attended the OPPD meeting argued that Hilgers overreached and that he seeks to interfere with a local government’s long-term promise to its community. Many who spoke said they thought the agreement was to make the change “by” 2026.

“We’re tired of being treated as expendable. We’re tired of having people not care about our health and the health of our neighbors,” said Mele Mason, who represents Florence on a North Omaha committee.

Multiple residents told the OPPD board that they were tired of what they felt were goal posts moving. In 2022, OPPD voted to delay the transition plan until 2026.

At that time, the North Omaha Station transition was made contingent on adding new power-producing plants to the OPPD grid. Those new plants could produce 600 megawatts, more than the units operating in North Omaha now, according to court records. Hilgers contended that the costs of adding such capacity, while shutting off other power, might help OPPD “tread water.”

‘Keep Your Promise’

OPPD and Hilgers cite local, state and federal data that the North Omaha power plant complies with emissions and health standards. Multiple residents, as well as State Sen. Terrell McKinney, one of two lawmakers whose districts cover North Omaha, told OPPD they’ve seen something different on the ground.

Terri Crawford, second vice president for the NAACP in Omaha, said she knows “far too well” the human cost in North Omaha as her son died from asthma. She said repeated assertions from OPPD and the state that data regarding environmental impacts of the power plant don’t exist or don’t show harms in North Omaha are “intellectually dishonest.”

“Keep your promise so that not one more child has to go to the emergency room and not one more child has to die from asthma,” Crawford said.

Alana Haynes Stein, an environmental sociology professor at Creighton University, said she teaches a class in which students map Omaha and statistics, finding higher rates of air pollution and asthma and lower life expectancies for North Omaha residents.

Haynes Stein said action could help prevent the case of her mother, who lost her father, a coal miner who suffered black lung, when she was nine years old.

“The price is too high not to act,” she said.

Transition Possible Late 2026

According to most recent OPPD materials, the board’s plan for the North Omaha Station awaits a study from the “Southwest Power Pool” on how OPPD can add new generation to the regional electrical grid organization. Southwest Power Pool is the overarching regional transmission organization overseeing the electricity grid in the central part of the country.

OPPD board materials indicate the study should come before a contract is awarded to install the North Omaha plant’s new natural gas burners.

An estimated OPPD timeline put the study as being approved in the third quarter of 2025 — July through September — and a contract for the work awarded by the end of this year. Transitioning would not occur until the final three months of 2026 according to that timeline.

Even in 2022, board materials suggested North Omaha Station might operate as-is through 2026.

The OPPD Board of Directors has two more monthly meetings scheduled this year. McKinney said he hopes North Omaha Station is back on the agenda in November.

‘Supply And Demand Issue’

McKinney led an Oct. 15 letter with nine other state senators urging Hilgers to withdraw his lawsuit. Progressive lawmakers described his actions as “inappropriate and politically motivated” and wrote that the lawsuit “threatens to derail years of public work, community engagement and hard-won progress toward environmental safety.”

“This lawsuit sends a chilling message to every Nebraskan fighting for healthy communities that when a community finally compels action from public institutions, the state’s top lawyer may step in to stop it,” the letter states.

Joining McKinney were North Omaha State Sen. Ashlei Spivey; Omaha State Sens. John Cavanaugh, Machaela Cavanaugh, John Fredrickson, Megan Hunt, Dunixi Guereca and Margo Juarez; Bellevue State Sen. Victor Rountree and Lincoln State Sen. George Dungan.

Hilgers, who served as a state senator between 2017 and 2023, including as speaker of the Legislature in his final two years, has said it’s not the right time to shut off any power units with peak energy demands rising and risks to cost. His office had no comment on the lawmakers’ letter.

The state senators argued that consumer costs might increase regardless of North Omaha’s status and that other changes, including regulating data centers, might be more helpful.

State Sen. Tom Brandt of Plymouth, chair of the Legislature’s Natural Resources Committee, has joined Hilgers in voicing skepticism about the North Omaha transition, as has State Sen. Jared Storm of David City, who led a legislative study in September into net-zero energy plans. OPPD answered questions from Brandt and Storm as part of that study, which are included in the Hilgers-led lawsuit.

Gov. Jim Pillen praised Hilgers’ OPPD lawsuit after it was announced and urged OPPD not to cease coal power production in Omaha. Hilgers had hinted when he announced his lawsuit that if OPPD could prioritize affordability and reliability while ending coal burning in North Omaha, he might be able to support it. OPPD still burns coal at its separate Nebraska City Station, a 1,337.5-megawatt facility.

“Ultimately, it is a supply and demand issue,” Hilgers said previously. “It would defy reality and economics to suggest that taking 200-plus megawatts offline, given this demand environment we’re in, will do anything other than increase the cost to [OPPD] ratepayers.”

This story was published by Nebraska Examiner, an editorially independent newsroom providing a hard-hitting, daily flow of news. Read the original article: https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2025/10/29/oppd-delays-vote-on-north-omaha-...