$1.8 Billion Electric Power Generator Project

A multi-specialty team of more than a dozen experienced Bowles Rice attorneys was engaged to counsel and represent, from concept to commencement of commercial generation, the private developer of a $1.8 billion, 700 mw merchant electric power plant in north central West Virginia.  This work involved, from the onset, extensive regulatory and environmental permitting, services as local borrower’s counsel for a complex debt and equity financing structure with multi-national investors, design and negotiation of a payment in lieu of property tax agreement with multiple local government bodies, assistance in the pursuit of crucial construction labor and engineering agreements and acquisition of a steam coal producer’s operations to assure a reliable source of  fuel.  

Along the way to commercial operation, serious legal challenges to the permit applications and tax relief arrangements emerged, resulting in litigation.  In the case of the former, the controversies associated with an unrelated earlier project in the State, that had been pursued by a major public power generation developer, had effectively raised the legal and political barriers confronted by our client.   However, with Bowles Rice counsel in the lead, both as part of the planning team and then as advocates, all were successfully overcome in proceedings before the West Virginia Public Service Commission, the Circuit Court of Monongalia County and the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals.