ST. PAUL (AP) — The proposed Big Stone II power plant suffered a major setback Friday when two administrative law judges recommended against allowing transmission lines from the plant to be built across west-central Minnesota.

If the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission accepts that recommendation, the project could be doomed, said Dan Sharp, a spokesman for the five utilities that are seeking to build the plant.

“The transmission lines are critical and unless we can build the transmission lines in Minnesota, the project can’t go,” Sharp said.

The administrative law judges held that the five utilities had failed to show that demand for electricity couldn't be better and more cost-effectively met with renewable energy and greater energy efficiency. And they also wrote that the utilities had not adequately considered the impact the coal-fired plant would have on global warming.

The utilities want to build the plant next to an existing plant near Milbank in eastern South Dakota, a few miles west of Ortonville, Minn. It would serve one million people, about half of them on the western plains of Minnesota. The power lines in question would run to Granite Falls and Willmar. Hutchinson Utilities has a contract to get electricity through one of the Big Stone II partners.

(Terry Davis is a Hutchinson Leader staff writer. E-mail him at davis@hutchinsonleader.com.)