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Dynegy Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Bruce Williamson knows there’s big money in burning dirty fossil fuels. He also knows the halcyon days of big coal are cooling as the country becomes more concerned with global warming.

Williamson’s strategy is to get while the gettin’ is still good, which would be sometime before Inauguration Day 2009. So, Dynegy (a company that nearly fizzled out when it tried to merge with Enron in 2002) bought LS Power, which builds fossil-fueled power plants. When the deal with LS Power closed in April of this year, it increased Dynegy’s number of power-generating facilities across the country to 31.

Dynegy’s new partner was equally shrewd. LS Power formed in 1990 and developed natural gas fueled power plants in the 1990s. But, it is not a coincidence that LS Power shifted its focus to coal-fired plants in 2001, right after Dick Cheney took charge of U.S. energy policy and met with a still-secret list of representatives from the oil, coal, mining, and drilling industries.

LS Power still has a number of projects in development, including the proposed 750-megawatt coal-burning power plant that would be sited on Merle Bell’s family farm in Waterloo. As his wife was dying of cancer, Bell signed off on an option for LS Power to buy his farm because the company threatened to otherwise build it adjacent to his property. But Bell now doesn’t want to sell the farm, which has been in his family for more than a century.

LS Power’s entry into the Cedar Valley has been well greased. They’ve announced $100,000 in support to African-American owned radio station KBBG. They’ve floated the idea of a $400,000 grant to the University of Northern Iowa for the research of biofuels.

Of course, these funds won’t be granted unless the plant begins construction. And let’s be honest: LS Power doesn’t care a whit about KBBG or UNI. They are just trying to buy off potential opponents in the African American community on the east side of Waterloo, near where the plant will be located, and at the university, where scientists can see through LS Power’s promises of environmentally friendly energy.

Waterloo Mayor Tim Hurley was an easy mark. Fresh from the success of bringing casino gambling to the Cedar Valley, this high roller muscled through the local zoning decision for LS Power because he was convinced the power plant would be another “gold mine.” And perhaps it really will be.

Here I digress to direct Mayor Hurley’s attention to the superb investigative report by Frontline and the New York Times in October 2005 on the effects of gold mines in Peru, Guatemala, and Ghana. Each ounce of gold requires the open-pit mining of 30 tons of rock, which is then drizzled with a cyanide solution to separate the gold from the ore. Big companies come in, mine the gold, and leave giant mounds of rubble and poisoned waters.

Gold mine indeed.

So, here comes LS Power, our very own “big company,” promising jobs, tax revenue (LS estimates more than $800,000 in annual tax revenue to Waterloo), and–this is a stretch–better education and electricity production that is “safe for the environment.” Part of the company’s environmental pitch is a bike path to nowhere and a lake that would be conveniently located to catch at least some of the mercury particles emitted from the smokestacks. As far as LS Power’s vision of better education, I’m not impressed after watching the dismal learnaboutcoal.org “resource” site linked to their webpage, which uses “cool” kids to spew “cool” disinformation about coal.

I’m not a believer in the proposed coal-burning plant. But, by anyone’s assessment, the power plant project hasn’t been going so well in recent weeks. More than 500 people showed up at Merle Bell’s farm on September 9 for a rally against the coal plant. And more than 300 turned up to fill a meeting room in Waterloo to speak against the plant on September 12 at a hearing of Iowa’s City Development Board.

After a five-hour hearing, in which the well-organized citizen group Community Energy Solutions revealed Waterloo’s greedy and mishandled annexation of Bell’s farm, the Board reported it will announce its decision in October. That is one month closer to the December expiration of LS Power’s option to buy the Bell farm.

I wouldn’t underestimate Dynegy and LS Power, which have more than $3 billion in investors’ funds to throw around. But Dynegy’s own CEO Bruce Williamson gives opponents a reason to continue to fight. As the deal with LS Power was about to close earlier this year, he told the Houston Chronicle that all of the company’s eight proposed coal-fired power plants aren’t likely to get built. “No development team is so good that they bat 1.000, but if you get .300 or above, that’s really good,” Williamson said.

It would be even better if we got them to strike out in Waterloo.