KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A federal judge in Washington ruled Tuesday that an environmental impact statement must be completed before construction of a another Finney County power plant can begin by Hays-based Sunflower Electric Power Corp.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Emmett Sullivan requires the Rural Utilities Service, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, to complete the environmental study before granting any approvals to Sunflower for the proposed $2.8 billion, 875-megawatt coal-fired power plant near Holcomb.

The decision is likely to delay construction of the plant, which has been the subject of a fierce partisan political fight in Kansas for years.

Sunflower spokeswoman Cindy Hertel said the utility’s officials don’t know yet how the ruling will affect its project outside Holcomb.

In March, Sullivan declared that RUS violated federal environmental law by failing to prepare an EIS before approving Sunflower’s proposal to build two 700-megawatt plants near the company’s current coal-fired plant in Finney County.

Tuesday’s ruling was aimed at coming up with a remedy for the violations he declared last year.

“The people of Kansas and downwind states will now get their legitimate public health concerns heard,” said Jan Hasselman of Earthjustice, who led the lawsuit on behalf of the Sierra Club. “Once the facts of this dirty and dangerous project are exposed to the public, we think that the federal government will have to just say no.”