Now it has found 118 acres of private land near Koosharem. Sevier Power Co. has an option to purchase the land, which Taylor said is a "very good site" to dump the ash.

"There's really nothing at all around it," said Taylor. "That doesn't make it pristine anything. I can go out into the middle of the desert and make the same claim."

He said there are no water studies (nor has his company ordered any) that would validate claims that the ash will negatively impact the watershed or Sevier River. To opponents, he added, any waste site will be "too close" to something.

The power company knows it's going to have another fight on its hands, this time over ash.

Kennon suggested putting the ash in old mines. "They're filling up mines back East," he said.

But no one is doing that in Utah.

Utah Division of Solid and Hazardous Waste's Dennis Downs and Utah Division of Oil, Gas and Mining's Jim Springer had not heard of anyone in Utah filling in old mines with fly ash. Some, Springer noted, may be backfilling mines with tailings from the mine.

Downs said that legally, a power company could store its ash in a landfill if it met requirements. But the problem there, he said, is that the dump would fill up a lot faster.

Like other sites, Sevier Power Co. could store the ash on the same property as the plant, Downs added. Taylor has heard it's what other plants in Utah do, but those against the plant from the beginning, he assumes, put "political pressure" on county officials to stop that from happening in Sevier County.

If the ash site appears to threaten the environment, then the state could step in.

"If they want to put it in a place that would contaminate surface or groundwater, we would definitely have a role there as would our division of water quality," Downs said.

But Kennon isn't convinced the power company will even be building a plant.

"They think they are," he said. "So far, we haven't been able to stop them by the courts."

Kennon has been or will be taking his case to the appeals and supreme courts in Utah.

In the meantime, Taylor is counting his company's victories, like clearing several local and state hurdles, including satisfying air quality regulators.

"Anything they tell us to do, we'll do it," Taylor said. "We're going to do everything that's necessary to assure this is a great project and that it's done properly."

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E-mail: sspeckman@desnews.com