A private St. Louis company plans to develop the White Pine Energy Station, a coal-fired power generation plant near Ely that could sell electricity to Northern Nevada and Utah utilities, cities and cooperatives.

White Pine Energy Associates, a subsidiary of LS Power Associates, wants to negotiate an interim development agreement with White Pine County.

The company has developed nine natural-gas fired power plants with 5,700 megawatts of generation capacity and $3 billion in investment.

It plans to build a plant that initially would have 500 to 800 megawatts of capacity and could be expanded to 1,600 megawatts. The project would cost between $600 million and $1 billion and would employ 100 workers. It could start operating as soon as 2010.

"We're in the very early stages of the process," development director Lawrence Willick said Monday.

White Pine Energy is talking with county officials, he said. Later, the company will identify one of several sites north of Ely and seek permits and approvals necessary for the power plant.

"The marketing and financing would be the final piece before we begin construction," Willick said.

White Pine County officials are enthusiastic about the proposal, he said.

"Their economy has been so dependent on mining and the ups and downs of mining," Willick said. Community leaders would like to find a more stable source of employment that also could spur economic development, he added.

Over the past 20 years, first the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and then an affiliate of PG&E Corp. discussed building power plants in the county, he said. Those projects did not proceed.

The plant could be linked to Sierra Pacific Power Co.'s transmission grid at the Gonder substation and from there could serve utilities and cooperatives in Northern Nevada, including potentially Sierra Pacific Power of Reno, and Utah, he said. The substation is east of U.S. Highway 93 south of McGill.

Willick said the company has not had discussions with Sierra Pacific Power yet. The power plant developer doesn't plan to sell to large retail industrial or commercial customers, he said.

Coal-fired power plants generally cost more to build than those using natural gas, Willick said, but the price of the fuel has been lower than natural gas prices.

He estimated that it would cost $10 to $15 for sufficient coal to generate a megawatt hour of electricity compared to $50 a megawatt hour for power from gas.

The company identified White Pine County after a regionwide search. The company liked the community's "progressive attitude," the availability of water for cooling and the closeness of transmission lines. Also, they noted that the city of Ely plans to own and operate the Nevada Northern Railroad. The plant would take rail delivery of low-sulfur coal from the Powder River Basin of Wyoming.

Willick noted the company is privately held and declined to identify its major individual investors by name. He did, however, mentioned plants the company has developed in Lockport, N.Y., Whitewater, Wis., Cottage Grove, Minn.

A public hearing on the project will be held at 1:30 p.m. Feb. 25 at the White Pine County Courthouse in Ely.