Friday, November 21, 2014

Not sure who Clean Line's PR guy/gal is, but they should be fired...

So, I came home from work yesterday and grabbed the mail. Within it is my local Dover Times. I thumb through it, and when I reach the back cover I am blasted by the image below. Sorry I posted it so large! I did it this way for effect because I am quite sure this is the way most people who saw the ad perceived it. After feasting your eyes on this insult, please continue scrolling:




Could this be any worse if it tried? Does Clean Line think that if they buy a 3/4 page ad in all of our local papers, it is going to do anything to make us want this giant, unnecessary transmission line on our land? Let's explore the problems with this ad, shall we?


  1. That's a beautiful picture, Clean Line! The only problem with it: Where is the transmission line?! True, the size of the field those folks are standing in is about the size of the swath of trees you intend to cut down in your path of destruction, but, really? Is this a joke?
  2. "Do I want cleaner air for my family?" Clean Line is, apparently, assuming that Arkansans buy the false correlation that if we do not choose to participate in their project, we do not "want cleaner air for our families". We just don't think their project is the way to achieve this. Sorry!
  3. "Wind energy generation allows utilities to burn less fossil fuel and reduce pollution. The Plains and Eastern transmission project will deliver low-cost renewable energy to Arkansas." What legally binding evidence are they using to justify this claim of "low-cost renewable energy to Arkansas"? The generators to supply their speculative venture haven't been constructed. There is no guarantee that Clean Line can ascribe that their project will do this, in any way.
  4. "Support clean energy in Arkansas today and in the future." Again, another false correlation that we, as Arkansans, do not support clean energy in Arkansas "today and in the future" if we do not support this project.
  5. Last (my favorite!) is the shell, misleading website address that was created by Clean Line Energy in the attempt to mislead Arkansans into signing their useless, arbitrary poll of support. Go there, you'll see. www.supportcleanenergyarkansas.com  

Shouldn't a company that's attempting to "sell" a product via force to Arkansans under federal eminent domain powers in an attempt to bypass our state law, at minimum, provide accurate advertising for the said product they're wishing to sell? 

If you feel like Plains and Eastern Clean Line, LLCis being deceptive with this advertising, file a complaint with the Arkansas Attorney General's office. When filing a complaint, choose "Consumer Complaint Form" in the drop-down menu.  

Saturday, November 15, 2014

Arkansas Beautiful: Inside the Corridor

The Value of Public Discourse

This Monday we will be participating in a friendly panel discussion on the pros and cons of the proposed Plains and Eastern HVDC line with Dr. Bob Allen "Bob of the Ozarks" and Glen Hooks, Chapter Director of the Sierra Club of Arkansas.

Regrettably, Clean Line, who had agreed to be part of the discussion, pulled out last week. A disappointment, considering what a great chance it would have been for "outreach" and clarification of some of the issues concerning us all. However, we are very grateful that the Hendrix College Environmental Concerns Committee recognized the importance of continuing with the panel in spite of Clean Line's absence and that they see the inherent value of public discourse.

For more information, please see the Hendrix event page on Facebook: 
https://www.facebook.com/events/734673029934862/

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Don't want one 200' Clean Line easement? How about two?

So, any time objections are placed before Clean Line about all of the various different inconsistencies, inaccuracies, lack of information provided, etc., they give one answer: "Go to our website to find out more information."

That's exactly what I did. Many of us have been skeptical of Clean Line's drawdown at the Department of Energy from a dual, 7,000mW line, to a single, 3,500mW line. We just assumed that Clean Line has it in their plans to, at a later date, construct a second 3,500mW line. Or is the current line 4,000mW? At the Tennessee Regulatory Authority hearing last Tuesday, Clean Line testified that the Plains and Eastern Clean Line was NOT going to transmit 3,500mW as stated in their application to the DoE, but instead 4,000mW. That's a post for another day, however. 


Drawing information directly from Clean Line Energy Partners website (located under "Filings - Federal") from a link entitled "Plains and Eastern FERC Filing," I will allow you to be the judge:





As recently as September of 2013, the "Tennessee Advanced Energy Business Council" used similar wording in a "project" entitled "Tennessee's Advanced Energy Asset Inventory" to describe the Plains and Eastern Clean Line project. Keep in mind, Clean Line is heavily involved with the TAEBC. They are members, have a "to be disclosed" seat on their advisory committee, and also have a member in TAEBC's "delegation" (aka "lobbyist") named Max Shilstone.


Note the green snippet above that describes the Plains and Eastern as "what would be America's largest power transmission line". Sounds fun, eh?

So, what's it going to be, Clean Line? What are landowners facing, here? Your inconsistency is appalling. Is it going to be a single, 3,500mW line as described in your application to the Department of Energy? Is it going to be a single 4,000mW line as described in your testimony before the Tennessee Regulatory Authority? Or, is this a two-phase project in which you wish to impose not one, but eventually two 3,500mW transmission lines with a 750 mile, 400' wide footprint?

The true stakeholders, the landowners on the path of this monstrosity, DEMAND an answer from you in the form of a written statement that indicates your ACTUAL current and future plans. Perhaps the media would be the better avenue to seek answers to these questions? Either way, a written response can be emailed to us at:


Tuesday, November 11, 2014

If You Liked It...

Clean Line: “Oh, won’t somebody think of the farmers!  No, wait… not those farmers… these farmers.”


Sigh… I have so much to say. I started this post about three weeks ago in response to Diana Rivera’s Department of Energy Draft Congestion Study comment on behalf of Clean Line . But since that time we’ve had an opposition meeting, Mr. Hurtado’s response, the IRP update, the TRA hearing on Clean Line’s petition for utility status, and the interim study meeting in AR… There’s no really good way to hit everything except by topic, so that’s where we’ll start.

Is it 7000MW, 3500MW, or 4000MW? And why won’t Clean Line commit to not adding a second line… in writing?

So the best thing I can say for Rivera’s comment is that it was nice of her to ask the Department of Energy to “update the project description” for P&E and GBE “to reflect changes implemented since 2012”:

“Namely, Plains & Eastern Clean Line is no longer under development as the two-phase
7,000 MW project originally envisioned, and Grain Belt Express Clean Line was extended 200 miles to reach a stronger point of interconnection in Indiana also while maintaining an interconnection in Missouri.”

Good for us, bad for our friends to the north, whose correction officially included an extra 200 miles for a total length of 750 miles. 

Good for us except that Clean Line has never said, in writing, that they won’t come back later to revive the 2nd phase of P&E. Something tells me that a successful petition for 1222 might mean a lot more of this kind of development in general. Handily, they’d have plans…well…handy.

Also of note was Rivera’s description of P&E:

The line will originate in the Oklahoma Panhandle and will be capable of delivering 3,500 MW of wind power to an interconnection point in Tennessee and 500 MW to an interconnection point in Arkansas.”
                        
So now we’re at 4000MW. This was confirmed by Clean Line testimony at the TRA hearing. Interesting, as for some reason, the majority of us were under the impression the line topped out at 3500MW. Maybe we misunderstood all along?

The angry cynic in me wonders if this has anything to do with their proposed converter station (supposedly, they’re eyeing land north of Russellville for it. Have they contacted landowners yet?) which Clean Line is actually under no obligation to build. Will they actually go through with the expense of building one if money comes up short on the way to Tenn? Is Arkansas' 500MW promise nothing but a feel-good gesture? And who’s going to buy the 500MW anyway?

Which brings us to…

No, not those customers… These customers

For a while we’ve been speculating that the  “Fifteen potential customers” who “submitted requests for transmission service totaling over 17,000 megawatts” Clean Line touted in their press release after the FERC granted them conditional approval to sell capacity came from generators and not end users. We got confirmation of that both at the TRA hearing and in Rivera’s DoE comment:

“Consistent with its negotiated rate authority granted by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC”), Plains & Eastern Clean Line conducted an open solicitation and received transmission service requests from developers of wind projects with total capacity far exceeding the capacity of the transmission line. In advance of the solicitation, developers of over 16,000 MW of wind projects in the Oklahoma Panhandle region responded to a request for information (“RFI”) regarding the need for transmission service.”

Unfortunately, we don’t know what “over” means numerically. Assuming that if they had over 17,500 MW we’d be talking about “nearly” 18,000MW… This means that of all their P&E solicitation, only 1,000 to maybe 1,500MW came from actual end users customers… or utilities (which Clean Line is not in AR nor yet in TN). The rest came from, you guessed it, the generators. If you build it, they will come?

1,000 to 1,500 MW… So the interest from utilities wanting to buy power was less than one third to less than one half of the total capacity of the line? Ouch.

Why? Maybe because the project is so uncertain.

But what’s more important here is that, yet again, Clean Line is attempting to justify the line based on generation rather than end use. Why is that important? Because we shouldn’t take people’s land forcibly based on potential generation and without a clearly defined and expressed user need. A vague “large and growing demand for renewable energy” doesn’t count. We just shouldn’t. It’s unethical and it opens up a huge can of worms. Try as Clean Line and the DoE might to call constraint a “need”, it isn’t. Especially when said "constrained" wind farms haven’t been developed.

You can think of this project as a three-legged stool: producers, end users, and regulators/permitting. If any one of those breaks, down we go. And worse, none of those legs are even screwed in yet. We’ve got wind farms that haven’t been built because they’re waiting for transmission (and, I’d guess, the future of the PTC), end users waiting for producers and permitting, and permitting that’s going to take another year at best and uses an untested section of law ripe for litigation. That’s a hell of a risk for anyone to get on board with, especially landowners being asked to sign perpetual easements. Especially considering the company doing the asking actually advocated for a less transparent process for a governmental study that essentially belongs to the taxpayers:

Clean Line acknowledges the difficulty or impossibility of accessing uniform data across the country and supports efforts to improve data quality and availability in the future. The issue of data access requires serious examination, and DOE may wish to consider using data that is not publicly available. Making data publicly available may discourage sharing of competitively sensitive information that could prove helpful in thoroughly studying congestion on the bulk electric system.”

But what about the farmers?

So what really set me off about Rivera’s comment was this section:

“These are real projects, many of which have land leased for wind turbines from
farmers seeking new sources of income, as drought has made traditional farming livelihoods uncertain. Wind power represents new hope for drought-resistant income and economic development in regions of the country otherwise struggling with diminishing populations.”

Why? Because it’s a cheap ploy to garner an emotional response. Of course everyone is worried about the sustainability of farming in the Midwest given the changing climate and increasing prevalence of drought. But to use that as a mechanism to justify the forced condemnation of land belonging to farmers in other states, affecting their financial security and independence, doesn’t make any sense at all. Maybe these developers should have had a plan to sell energy to more local markets BEFORE signing lease agreements with farmers. Maybe they shouldn’t have made promises to people that they couldn’t keep.

And what Rivera fails to acknowledge here is the very simple fact that the farmers she’s referring to in her comment had a choice. They were able to choose whether or not to participate in development projects. Clean Line, for all their “we are committed to negotiating easements” talk is still pursuing the right to eminent domain as a means to complete this transmission project. And, yes, they will cut through farms in Arkansas. And, no, not everyone wants to participate.

Which brings me to a question we heard repeatedly from the TRA directors in reference to the opposition letters they received from landowners in Arkansas, including ours, which has about 350 signatures…

What went wrong in Arkansas?

The directors at the TRA heard from a landowner who talked about how wonderful her experience with Clean Line had been. Their question about why landowners in Arkansas seemed so unsupportive of the project was met with the assertion that it was simply because there was less certainty in the route in here and, therefore, less landowner contact.

Personally, I think it probably has more to do with the fact that Clean Line NEEDS the TRA on board. I think they were probably on their best behavior in Tennessee because they had to be, since SWPA doesn’t have jurisdiction for siting the line there. Not to mention that attempting to buy seventeen miles of easement is a lot easier than buying two-hundred and something. In fact, Clean Line bragged about being able to obtain 40 out of 50 easements in TN (the last 10 are apparently a little cautious of the three-legged stool and are waiting to see if Clean Line actually gets routing authority. We assume, anyway, since that’s what Clean Line said and none of those landowners were present to say differently)… And they did it without eminent domain, so it can be done. It would be very interesting to see the terms and conditions of those agreements.

They were right, though, about having less landowner contact in Arkansas. After our Dover meeting, which was attended by nearly 100 people (or a little less than 1/6th of the total number of people who signed into all the DoE/CL scoping meetings combined...across three states), Mario Hurtado talked to our town newspaper about all the outreach they’ve done in Arkansas…

Um, maybe they need a new outreach coordinator. When Chris Hardy went to Arkansas Tech University in Russellville several weeks ago to pitch, excuse me, present the project to the students in the Chemistry Club, among other groups, did they take the time to hold “office hours” in the town a few miles up Highway 7 that would be directly impacted by the line? No.

It is amazing to me that Clean Line continues to talk about outreach as if they’re patting themselves on the back. Notice that “stakeholder” does not equal “landowner”. No, meetings with NGO’s, contractors, and the few landowners lucky enough to get “the unicorn” (Clean Line’s postcard) or read about “office hours” (advertised the same day as the event) in the local papers (which in very rural areas, often have to be mailed and don’t arrive until late in the day) does not count as informing the people whose land you want to use to construct a transmission line. There’s this thing called a registered letter. It’s awesome.

In an attempt to reach as many locals as possible, our group actually went door to door before our meeting. Since we were short on time and corporate sponsorship, we just hit one road on the route. We were able to speak with eleven people directly. Only a few knew anything about the line. One person knew they were in the proposed corridor. 

One. 

Nice job fellas.


If you liked it, then you should have put a ring on it. 

Saturday, November 8, 2014

Letter to Governor Mike Beebe about recent support letter from the Governors Wind Coalition...

Governor Beebe:

I am writing you as a concerned landowner who could potentially be adversely impacted by the Plains and Eastern Clean Line project. I am writing you specifically because of a letter I recently discovered from the "Governor's Wind Coalition" in which the governors of South Dakota and Washington urged the Department of Energy to utilize Section 1222 of the 2005 Energy Policy Act. Your spokesman, Mr. DeCample, said the following when asked about the letter:

But a spokesman for the Democratic governor of Arkansas, Mike Beebe, said he hasn’t signed off on the letter. “While Arkansas is a member of the coalition, we are not a signee on this letter; in fact, this is the first we’ve seen of it,” Matt DeCample, a spokesman for the governor, said in an email. “We’ve not been involved in the national discussion of this particular issue.”

I agree. Arkansans have NOT been allowed to be a part of the national discussion about this issue, and it seems as though we are being left out of the process. I ask you: How is this fair to us? How is it fair for the governors of two states that would not be impacted at all by the 1222 statute are speaking on the behalf of hundreds of landowners along the 300 mile path of destruction this would cause to natural beauty and private property owners in our state? If we don't have a say the fate of our own property in this case, why on earth are we a member of this "Governors Wind Coalition"?
Clean Line Energy Partners, LLC, is a privately held, venture capitalist funded (many who are involved heavily in investments in the oil industry, I might add), limited liability company that was rejected by the Arkansas Public Service Commission in 2011. They are now seeking federal siting authority over unwilling landowners. I feel like this is an absolute overreach into states rights, and would set an extremely dangerous precedent of allowing a private LLC to obtain federal authority of eminent domain for private financial gain.
There is significant and wide-ranging opposition to this project that continues to form in our state. Recently, our opposition group gathered and submitted approximately 350 signatures to the Tennessee Regulatory Authority urging the directors to deny Clean Line public utility status in that state. They can be found here:http://www.state.tn.us/tra/dockets/1400036.htm Signature gathering on this front is ongoing. Our group is also coordinating an opposition campaign to Secretary Moniz of the Department of Energy urging him not to allow the DoE to partner with Clean Line Energy under the authority of the Southwestern Power Administration.
Our group recently held a local meeting in the town of Dover attended by about 100 people, many of whom could potentially be affected by this. When asked who in the audience had only recently found out about this project, approximately 75% of them raised their hand. When asked how many had been contacted by Clean Line, approximately five raised their hand. It is our sincere belief that Clean Line has been utterly incompetent in its outreach efforts to the very people who would be most impacted by this highly speculative project. This project has been in development since 2009.
So, after all of this has been said, we are asking for your help. You have been a great steward in this state throughout your governorship. Arkansans need to be allowed to have a voice on this issue, and there are literally hundreds of people who do not feel as though they have been given this opportunity. If you'd like to know more about the opposition to this project, you can find us at the following locations:


Thank you very much for your time and consideration in this matter.

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Governors who should mind their own states' business...

So, what does it look like when the governors of two states, Washington and South Dakota, urge the Department of Energy to use Section 1222 of the 2005 Energy Policy Act to remove your property rights in Arkansas for an unnecessary transmission line without so much as even consulting with your governor? This is what that looks like:





And what does the Arkansas governor say when he realizes a letter was sent, basically on his behalf, by two faraway governors who really should mind their own business?
But a spokesman for the Democratic governor of Arkansas, Mike Beebe, said he hasn’t signed off on the letter. “While Arkansas is a member of the coalition, we are not a signee on this letter; in fact, this is the first we’ve seen of it,” Matt DeCample, a spokesman for the governor, said in an email. “We’ve not been involved in the national discussion of this particular issue.”
Mr. DeCample is correct. Arkansas has NOT had a chance to be involved in the national discussion of this particular issue. In fact, it seems as though we are being left out! How is that fair to us? If we're not going to have input into the fate of our land, then why on earth are we a member of this "Governor's Wind Coalition" as Arkansans? Maybe we should contact Governor Beebe and ask! 


Something really smells, here!