Arkansas Delegation Rolls Out the APPROVAL Carpet for Secretary Perry

I'm late. I meant to have this posted yesterday, but... life. Anyway, we're gonna keep this simple because some things don't need a lot of chatter...

On Monday afternoon, the Arkansas delegation filed the APPROVAL Act. 

On Tuesday, they sent a letter to newly confirmed Department of Energy Secretary Rick Perry. And it really perfectly distills the core issue with the Department of Energy's proposed participation in Clean Line Energy Partner's Plains & Eastern HVDC line:

Our objection to Clean Line’s application should not be viewed as a fight against renewable energy; we each understand the importance of having a reliable electricity grid and are strong advocates of a diverse energy portfolio, including wind, solar, hydropower, renewable biomass, and nuclear energy. Likewise, we do not take issue with the building of national infrastructure; robust infrastructure investments, including the enhancement of the electrical grid, are often productive undertakings.

Instead, our objections relate to the vast overreach the Obama Administration employed, allowing this project to skip the necessary protections which exist to protect state sovereignty and private property rights.

Throughout the history of electric transmission, factors for the approval of these lines have been reviewed and decided at the state level. As the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service has noted:

“The location and permitting of facilities used to transmit electricity to residential and commercial customers have been the province of the states (with limited exceptions) for virtually the entire history of the electricity industry. State and local governments are well positioned to weigh the local factors that go into siting decisions, including environmental and scenery concerns, zoning issues, development plans, and safety concerns”[1]

The rejection of the transmission line by Arkansas’s (PSC) forced DOE and Clean Line to resort to using Section 1222. This is the first time DOE has used Section 1222 to authorize the development, construction, or operation of transmission facilities, and the only partnership the Department has (to date) with an entity to do so.

Sigh. It's so good, right? Love those guys when it comes to this stuff... my Clean Line BFAPs. As to whether 1222 actually does give the DOE room to use eminent domain... I guess we'll wait and see what a judge has to say.

For a deeper dive into all of this stuff, please check out Keryn Newman's most recent blog post. She hits it as only Keryn can.

I should stop right here, but I can't. I promise I'm only going to address one of the reported responses to this legislation, though... And it actually didn't come from Clean Line (because we've all heard everything they say before. I read it and in my head I hear the noises grown ups make when they talk on Charlie Brown).

It actually came from the IBEW... Guys. C'mon.

Let me preface my comment by saying I am a freak for unions. I'm a Utah Phillips listening, Union Thugs following, right-to-work disdaining, union lover. However, "the IBEW strongly disapproves of politics getting in the way of American job creation"... Please. I'm assuming politics are fine as long as they actually create jobs then? It's just a problem when they get in the way?

Seriously, unions have got to stop allowing themselves to be used as corporate pawns. The whole concept of lifting and protecting the middle class goes out the window when you allow yourselves to be manipulated into strong arming regular people. You want jobs, we want you to have jobs... But we want to be kept whole, too. Is that not fair? We want bread, yes... but we want, what? What?? Roses too. Cripes.

 

Money Changes Everything

I should be writing about everything that’s happened over the last few weeks: the Missouri Public Service Commission turning down Grain Belt Express , the end of the Section 1222 comment period, the introduction of the APPROVAL Act in the House (Big hugs to the delegation), Amazon choosing to go with locally generated, on-shore wind in North Carolina , and the spokesman and CEO of an energy advocacy group, counting Clean Line among its members, who swallowed his entire foot with what might be one of the most insensitive statements ever: 

“There’s no production in Arkansas, so people there just see it as a power line coming through their property,” he said.“It’s understandable, but let’s remember we all see hundreds of power lines every day,” Foltz added. “What’s one more?”

(Holy gag, Batman...)

There was also the announcement of another solar farm in Arkansas, a conference call I’m still totally geeking out over, the final draft of the TVA’s IRP which makes it pretty clear that HVDC wind is either the cheapest or vastly most expensive source of wind they could purchase… because utilities just love that kind of uncertainty. Here's an illustrative graphic Dave sent me:

 And, of course, there was the Attorney General of Oklahoma coming thisclose to accusing Clean Line of lying about state regulatory approvals to other states and, well, the feds. From their 1222 comment:

“As demonstrated in comment 2 above, Clean Line has not been consistent in the statements it has made to DOE, FERC or state regulatory agencies. There are numerous material and substantial incorrect, misleading and/or inconsistent statements and omissions in Clean Line's Application materials. DOE should reject Clean Line's proposal based on these conflicting, misleading, incorrect and incomplete statements. In the alternative, DOE should at a minimum perform an independent review and comparison of all statements made by Clean Line to DOE, FERC, the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, the Arkansas Public Service Commission, the U.S. EPA, SPP, MISO, and all other state and federal agencies, transmission organizations and other entities to whom Clean Line submitted statements and information related to the Plains and Eastern Clean Line Project.”

Sirs, consider yourselves hugged.

There were a host of awesome and substantial comments turned in:

Downwind, LLC

Colorado River Energy Distributors Association (The equivalent to SPRA for the Western Area Power Association)

Southwest Power Resources Association
Center for Rural Affairs (Recommending we reconsider the way we assemble corridors and the use of eminent domain)

If you get the chance, check them out. Either we’re not the only “busload of crazies” out there, or we’re just actually not so crazy. Incidentally, this is our comment, which we wrote with our lawyer Carol Overland, who went above and beyond in working with us. 

I should talk about all that, but I don’t want to. I want to talk about Cyndi Lauper instead.

When I was a little girl I loved Cyndi Lauper. I didn’t just love her, I wanted to be her. I was her actually, for Halloween in second grade. Her voice was so honest and raw… Her songs, too. When I was eight, “Time After Time” was my favorite, but the one that’s resonating with me lately is “Money Changes Everything”. It kind of got lost at the time because money was so huge in the eighties, right? Material girls everywhere, but “Money Changes Everything” isn’t just about the cash, it’s about the damage we’re willing to inflict on each other to get and keep it.

And that’s the bottom line about this situation. Clean Line has poured unspeakable money into these projects. For us, the landowners, we continue busting our knuckles against a brick wall, but the best that we can hope for is to be left alone. 

Clean Line is in this for either a twenty-year return or a quick, profitable sale. We fight and fight, without vast legal or financial resources, and our "preferred outcome" is simply to maintain control of what we have worked to build. We lose no matter what. No matter how "by the rules" we've lived our lives, because we'll never see a "pay day" for what we've been through or the work we've done. 

What's worse is that we're always at risk. Grain Belt Express should be over (by the way, what about the rocks on someone who feels comfortable telling the public service commission that just tossed their project after intense scrutiny that they are “confused” about the benefits? Lol, that’s either total madness or brilliance), but Clean Line can always appeal decisions, as long as they can pay to do so. There are no real consequences for what they put people through (other than failure of one or some of their LLCs).

Which is why it is so incredibly important we have good processes to examine "need", and so intensely infuriating when people (generally with no knowledge of the situation other than what they've been fed by Clean Line or their supporters) feel comfortable shaming landowners for being upset about eminent domain. Especially, I'm going there, when those people are supposed to be "progressive". I have been shocked by some of the ridiculous justifications and knee-jerk judgements and assumptions I've seen come out of the left through this whole process. I thought we were better than that. To argue that eminent domain is appropriate because we've used it before? Please...

Lawlor had likened the conflict to the 1930s, when electric power came to rural America and many farmers didn’t want the intrusion.

“We will always have opposition,” Lawlor said before Wednesday’s vote. “But people opposed to this now turned on their lights this morning and that power came across somebody‬’s land.”

0.o

So in almost ninety years we can't make progress? That makes sense. Because I know people still like to do things the way people did ninety years ago: smoking and drinking through pregnancy, overt legal segregation, compulsory sterilization... Social security was new... and totally suspect.

Sorry, pontificating... again. The bottom line is that Clean Line had an idea that was out of the box. Really out of the box. They just didn't bother to take it all the way out of the box. Because, at it's heart, this idea isn't about saving the world (although that may be part of it) or being truly fair. It's about making money. So it makes sense to minimize landowners. To shove us on "the crazy bus". To make us grasping or greedy, even though this whole situation wasn't of our making. It's easier to hurt people when you can dismiss them as irrational... whether or not that's true.

Just like Principal Vernon, "You see us as you want to see us—in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions."

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/news/government-politics/article26031445.html#storylink=cpy

An Old School Straw Poll

We've been collecting data at our opposition meetings over the last few months to try and figure out what went wrong with this project... How could it be possible that so many people seemed not to know about the scoping period? Was there some kind of silent majority who did know and just a few unluckies who happened to band together? Did we have a blindspot bias? Or was there truly enough of a breakdown in the notification process (for whatever reason- we'll not speculate here, although I'm sure readers can guess what our hunches are) that there should be some kind of official inquiry into exactly what happened? Well, we're not statisticians. We're farmers. We don't have the resources to survey everyone on the line... But we know how to take a head count...

Now, if you're reading this blog, you probably know that yesterday was a pretty big day for us. But it wasn't just the introduction of Senators Boozman and Cotton's APPROVAL Act (Assuring Private Property Rights Over Vast Access to Lands Act), though that was huge. And, incidentally, though some people have tried to shame the Senators for their attempt to return veto power to the states in transmission siting while supporting the Keystone XL pipeline, this "left-wing extremist" right here would like to point out that, regarding Keystone, the Obama Administration refused to take action until the issue of eminent domain was settled by Nebraska's Supreme Court. Why? Because state rules matter, too. In fact, just today we found out an injunction was ordered to halt the condemnation proceeding for Keystone as some issues are worked out.

But that's not all... Yesterday, we found out that, contrary to what we've all been led to believe, there is opposition to this line in Tennessee. Go, Tipton County:

The commissioners unanimously passed a resolution Monday night that read, in part, "The necessity of this massive project is questionable given TVA's release statement that it has already reached EPA's target system-wide and expects to exceed it."

(Should we maybe start a discussion here about the difference between what qualifies as a need that justifies eminent domain and what's just convenient for industry?... Sigh, again...)

And if that wasn't enough, late last night we learned that both the Cleburne and Franklin County Quorum Courts passed unanimous resolutions against Clean Line. We don't have links to those yet, but will post them as soon as we do.

If I may, there is no joy in this. Even while we celebrate the relationships we've made with each other and these tiny (and not so tiny... I mean... federal legislation? Introduced specifically because one company managed to bungle their PR so badly? Even though 1222 has always been sketchy...Dang. And that's nothing compared to what's coming. Lawyers are salivating to get their hands on this bad boy. Did I mention this? Looks like Iowa's had enough, too). But while small victories give us a little hope, they don't give us relief. We don't get back our time, which has been stolen by these people. We don't get back the money we've spent, just to do the job they haven't and reach people. We don't get back the sleepless nights.

Dr. Moniz- It's time...