Rural Utilities Service February 26, 2010 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The Rural Utilities Service (RUS) and the Western Area Power Administration (Western) have issued a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the proposed Deer Creek Station in White, Brookings County, South Dakota. The DEIS was prepared pursuant to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in accordance with the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) regulations for implementing the procedural provisions of NEPA (40 CFR parts 1500-1508), RUS's NEPA implementing regulations (7 CFR part 1794), and Western's NEPA implementing regulations (10 CFR part 1021). Western is the lead federal agency as defined at 40 CFR 1501.5; RUS is a cooperating agency. The purpose of the DEIS is to evaluate the potential environmental impacts of and alternatives to Basin Electric Power Cooperative's (Basin Electric) application for a RUS loan and a Western interconnection agreement to construct the proposed 300 megawatt (MW) Deer Creek Station in Brookings and Deuel Counties, South Dakota (Project). The proposed facility would include a new natural gas-fired combustion turbine set, a heat recovery steam generator (HRSG), and a steam turbine generator set.