Write letters to Judge Heydinger
Posted on | July 18, 2008 |
Your opinion matters! If you haven’t already done so, please consider writing a letter to Judge Beverly Heydinger, stating your concerns about the CapX powerline project. It’s crucial that great numbers of us let Judge Heydinger know why the project is not right for Minnesota at this time.
Whether your concerns are about the environment, health effects of EMF, locally produced power, sustainability, property values, or aesthetics, write it down and send it in by August 22 September 26 (we got an extension!).
Here are some sample letters. The mailing address is below. Do it!
Read on for more ideas to get you started.
What costs nearly $2 billion dollars and provides a way for the utilities to circumvent the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission’s concerns about approving the Big Stone II transmission lines and other coal plants?
If you answered the CapX 2020 power line projects, you win the jackpot — increased electricity rates, eminent domain for high voltage power lines and new coal plants not subject to review to protect Minnesota’s interests.
Please write and mobilize your friends and family to write citizen letters and comments to Judge Beverly J. Heydinger by August 22, 2008.
Your letters are critically important. Your effort (and the efforts of your family, friends and neighbors) to send in personal comments can help balance the enormous resources the utilities have invested in the CapX proceedings.
The judge will read every single letter that is not obviously a FORM LETTER.
My one suggestion — in addition to expressing your views about CapX and the evidence, include in the letter something about yourself or your family personally — where you live, how you farm, whether you are a mom, dad, young person, farmer, engineer, what your hopes are for your children, any expertise you may have about any subject related to the power line arguments. It is harder to disregard a letter from a person who tells a story that makes him or her real to the judge. This makes it clear that they are not “form” letters. Using different type faces and size helps too.
Please take the time to communicate your opinion on this critical energy issue! Please mobilize your family and friends to do the same.
Write to Judge Heydinger and send me a copy for our files.
Letters can be sent until August 22, 2008 to Administrative Law Judge Beverly J. Heydinger at capx.oah@state.mn.us
Or, send your letter to the following U.S. Mail address:
The Honorable Beverly J. Heydinger
Office of Administrative Hearings
600 North Robert Street
P.O. Box 64620
St. Paul, Minnesota 55164-0620
OVERVIEW OF ISSUES
1) What impact will the CapX power lines have on Minnesota’s energy future? Although Minnesota has laws setting standards for energy efficiency, preferring renewable energy and setting renewable energy standards, the utilities are claiming that they should be allowed to build the CapX power lines without maximizing conservation or considering renewable energy laws. The CapX power lines could be used to transmit energy from coal plants and other fossil fuel plants as well as wind to energy consumers in markets east of Minnesota.
2) What impact will the CapX power lines have on Minnesota community based energy development? The CapX power lines favor large, remote energy sources, rather than community-based renewable energy closer to where power is needed in Minnesota. Although ratepayers would pay for the CapX power lines, local wind projects would be responsible to pay large expenses to link up to this high voltage system.
3) What can be done to affect the CapX 2020 power line proposals? WRITE A LETTER TO THE JUDGE! tell her:
- The CapX power lines wouldn’t all be needed if conservation and management of peak energy demand were maximized. Minnesota’s priority should be conservation and smarter use of energy.
- Don’t build the CapX power lines for coal plants. Make sure that the energy on any new transmission lines is renewable energy –wind, solar power, biomass.
- Choose alternatives to CapX that rely on more efficient use of power lines, more community based renewable energy and more energy produced closer to where it is needed. In the long run, that will strengthen Minnesota’s economy, provide more energy security and save ratepayer costs.
- Use the precautionary principle when evaluating the need for new high voltage power lines. Until EMF exposure is proven safe stop exposing Minnesota citizens to involuntary EMF exposure.
- State that you are a member of The Citizens Energy Task Force.
- Personalize your letter, tell the Judge something about yourself or your family personally — where you live, how you farm, whether you are a mom, dad, young person, farmer, engineer, what your hopes are for your children, any expertise you may have about any subject related to the power line arguments. It is harder to disregard a letter from a person who tells a story that makes him or her real to the judge. This makes it clear that they are not “form” letters. Using different type faces and size helps too.
- Tell her your concerns regarding the CapX line and how you hope she will recomend. You don’t have to be an expert, a small personal letter to the Judge is fine.
- When possible use facts, figures, statistics and other data to quantify, validate and support your testimony.
Below find additional information to use in your letter writing.
Here are a few basic facts:
• The utilities are claiming that the CapX 345 kV high voltage power lines are not intended to serve any particular power plants, so they don’t have to follow Minnesota law, Minn. Stat. 216B.243, subd.3a which creates a preference for renewable energy, whether from power plants or carried by transmission lines. (The state Department of Commerce does not oppose this circumvention of key state policy.)
• Unlike the southwestern Minnesota 825 MW of wind proceeding or the Big Stone II transmission proceeding, this would allow the utilities to build major new power lines without a preference for wind energy, in fact without disclosing what energy sources will even be served by the CapX power lines. This means that we not only have health risks from coal, but unknown economic and regulatory risks.
• The utilities have proposed CapX 2020 power lines that extend from Fargo, North Dakota and Brookings, South Dakota across Minnesota to LaCrosse, Wisconsin. This would allow coal plants in South Dakota (600 MW proposed for Big Stone) and North Dakota (over 1255 in line in the MISO queue) to hook up their power in South or North Dakota without having to meet the requirements of Minnesota law reviewing transmission for coal.
• Since the Big Stone plant is already exempted from state law restricting new coal plants that increase greenhouse gas emissions (take a look at Minn. Stat. 216H. 03, Subd. 7 and weep) if the Big Stone coal plant were to propose to hook up its power near Brookings, South Dakota, Minnesota would have no regulatory ability to oppose this coal plant. The current Minnesota Public Utilities Commission proceeding would become moot.
• In addition, once the CapX 2020 power lines hook up LaCrosse, Wisconsin, electricity can be sold on the open market to Wisconsin and points east without any role at all for Minnesota law and policy to decide whether coal plants are built in North or South Dakota (prevailing winds blowing their emissions east to our cities and lake country). Neither our renewable energy standard nor our greenhouse gas initiative would be worth the paper they were written upon.
The best solution is not to hook up the CapX 2020 power lines at all, particularly the high voltage line across the Mississippi River to Wisconsin. But, if any new high voltage power lines are built, they must be built with conditions and wind energy purchase agreements so that they carry wind power and follow Minnesota policy preferring renewable energy, setting renewable energy standards and preventing increased global warming.
The CapX 2020 proceeding is a dull, technical proceeding with a grotesque disparity of resources between utilities and their allies and intervenors representing citizens (Citizens Energy Task Force) and representing community based energy development (North American Water Office and Institute for Local Reliance).
The only way in which Minnesota’s policy preference for renewable energy has a chance is if many citizens and grassroots advocates lend their voices to the discussion.
TALKING POINTS – SPECIFIC ISSUES
THE TWIN CITIES-LACROSSE LINE SHOULD NOT BE APPROVED
1. The Twin Cities to LaCrosse line would provide a pathway for electricity from North Dakota in the west, where coal fields are located, to electric markets such as Milwaukee, Chicago and cities further east. If this power line were built, our Minnesota communities would take the burden of having the power lines and have no say so about the type of energy on the system.
2. The demand for energy during the summer peak in the Rochester area could be met with a combination of conservation, management of energy demand and smaller power lines that support wind in southeast Minnesota. (The testimony of Mike Michaud suggests cheaper and quicker alternatives to meet this Minnesota energy need).
3. Other CapX power lines coming into Minnesota from the west may have some value in terms of providing Minnesota with more renewable energy, but the Twin Cities to LaCrosse Line doesn’t. This power line also has negative environmental impacts, including the crossing of the Mississippi River into Wisconsin.
4. The proposed Twin Cities to La Crosse power line would cause Minnesota ratepayers to pay for power lines that primarily serve energy consumers in Wisconsin and places further east. It should not be approved.
CONSERVATION & ENERGY MANAGEMENT
1. Lowering the amount of electricity needed is an essential part of determining how much electricity must be supplied to communities. This means not only that the CapX 2020 utilities must meet Minnesota law’s 1.5% energy savings goal. The utilities must also use energy management specifically planned to reduce the highest demand times in the summer and the winter.
2. The utilities are claiming that two of the three CapX power lines are needed based on the highest energy use in the winter and the summer, what they have called the summer and winter peak. But they haven’t suggested in any of their application materials how they could use energy management tools to reduce the need for the new power lines by focusing on these high demand times.
3. The Department of Commerce testimony has explained that customer-volunteered controlled air-conditioning program (Saver’s Switch) has over 328,000 residential and business customers with about 325 MW of load management available. This is the direction we should be going in – giving consumers choices to cut energy use when it is most costly – rather than building huge power line systems to meet “community” needs.
4. The energy we use at home accounts for about a fifth of U.S. global warming pollution. The average home generates about 22,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a year through electricity use and heating. (NESEA)
5. If every American home replaced just one light bulb with an ENERGY STAR qualified bulb, we would save enough energy to light more than 3 million homes for a year, more than $600 million in annual energy costs, and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of more than 800,000 cars.
6. The electric utility industry is the largest source of pollution in our country. Electric utilities generate 66% of the sulfur oxide pollutants, for example. (NESEA website).
7. The CapX power lines would just add to this problem. The utilities have planned their three big power lines based on a plan to supply only 36% of the new power needed with renewable energy. (Answer to North American Water Office Information Request 12) This could mean up to 64% of the energy on the CapX power lines would be fossil fuel – coal and gas.
8. The only way to change this business as usual is to deny the utilities the choice of using our ratepayer money to build these power lines.
http://www.nesea.org/energy/info/ (Northeast Sustainable Energy Association)
http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagID=602 (Environment Defense Fund)
http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=cfls.pr_cfls (Energy Star)
WIND POWER NOT COAL FROM NORTH DAKOTA
1. The Cap X 2020 power lines were designed with a plan to use coal and gas for up to 64% of the new energy between now and 2020. Air pollution that results from fossil fuel powered electricity generation threatens human health, the environment, and the long-term economic viability of this region. Electricity generation is responsible for 76% of the SO2 emissions in the United States, almost a third of the oxides of nitrogen and mercury, and half of the carbon dioxide. See <http://www.sierraclub.org/coal/dirtytruth/>
2. The CapX utilities and the state Department of Commerce are insisting that there be no conditions placed on the CapX power lines to make it more likely that they will carry wind energy rather than dirty coal. If the LaCrosse line is built, coal power could be sold to Milwaukee and Chicago without our laws about renewable energy having any effect.
3. . In the last century, coal, oil, and natural gas were promoted as cheap sources of energy, but their hidden costs have been enormous. Wind power has no hidden costs, and it has become more cost-effective with each new round of technological advancements. The cost of wind-generated electricity has fallen from nearly 40¢ per kWh in the early 1980s to 3-10¢ per kWh today depending on wind speed and project size. Since wind is free, the price of wind power is stable, unlike electricity from fossil fuel powered sources, which depends on fuels whose prices, are costly and may vary considerably.
4. A study conducted by energy experts from Stanford’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering concluded that, by building approximately 250,000 new turbines, America could eliminate almost two-thirds of its coal-generated electricity. This would reduce US 1999 greenhouse gas emissions to 7 percent below 1990 levels — a goal originally proposed by the Clinton administration under the controversial 1997 U.N. Kyoto Protocol on climate change.
5. why are we assuming that wind can’t be stored? Why aren’t we developing technologies to reduce our need to burn coal?
(See North Carolina Wind Energy Working Group fact sheet, February 2003.
COMMUNITY BASED WIND POWER AND DISTRIBUTED ENERGY
1. Wind energy provides more jobs per dollar invested than any other energy technology. Every time a wind energy project is installed, it creates new jobs for people who set up and maintain the turbines. Employment opportunities range from meteorologists and surveyors to structural engineers, assembly workers, and mechanics and operators.
2. The U.S. wind industry currently directly employs more than 2,000 people, and every megawatt of new wind capacity creates 15-19 jobs and about 60 person-years of employment. Each 100 MW of wind development in southwest Minnesota has generated about $1 million per year in property tax revenue and about $250,000 per year in direct lease payments to landowners.
3. Economists (like Citizens Energy Task Force witness Arne Kildegaard) have done studies of the economic impacts of community based wind energy. They have found that community-based wind energy creates as much as 4 or 5 times as much local economic benefit as wind owned by non-local corporate
NEW POWERLINE STUDY FINDS THAT LOCAL WIND ENERGY GENERATION CAN AVOID NEW TRANSMISSION LINES
(Summary from North American Water Office, George Crocker)
1. On June 16, 2008, the Minnesota Department of Commerce released the findings of the first of two major power line studies ordered by the Minnesota Legislature. The study’s conclusions affirm those of a previous utility study that found that significant amounts of wind energy can be injected into the existing transmission system at costs far lower than building new transmission lines to more distant wind farms.
2. The study found that 600 MW of dispersed, community-based wind projects could be integrated across Minnesota into the existing grid system with no additional costs for transmission. For comparison, the proposed 600 MW Big Stone II coal fired power plant would need to spend about $250 million for new transmission infrastructure, just in Minnesota.
3. This study points the way toward a major shift in electric utility management, away from remote central station – mostly coal and nuclear power plants – and huge power lines and toward more dispersed renewable energy and a more efficient use of power lines.
To read the complete study: http://www.state.mn.us/portal/mn/jsp/content.do?subchannel=-536881736&programid=536916477&sc3=null&sc2=-536887792&id=-536881351&agency=Commerce
COSTS TO RATEPAYERS
1. No one is telling us the truth about the costs of the CapX 2020 projects. In their application, the utilities said that the high voltage power lines they were proposing would cost $1.3 billion to $1.7 billion. This number didn’t include the costs needed for smaller power lines required when you build the big ones. It didn’t include the costs of any new energy plants. It didn’t include the costs for line losses from sending energy a long distance of hundreds of miles, which could be as much as 15 or 20% of the energy wasted. They want to use our money to build these things and they won’t tell us how much it will cost.
2. Some of the witnesses now are talking about even bigger power lines, more power lines. Two 345kV power lines or even using 500kV power lines. Every time they “super-size” the power lines, they are expecting ratepayers – like us – to pay for it. We are sick of being “super-sized.”
3. We’ve asked, but no one has told us how much our rates will go up to build the CapX 2020 power lines. When the utilities have had other projects (even the good ones, like cleaning up some Twin Cities coal plants) there was a detailed analysis of what the project would cost and who would pay it before anything was approved. The CapX wish list is completely out of control.
RISKS OF ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELDS
Note from Atina: I have a 600 page scientific report on EMF issues that is very thorough. If you would like me to send you a copy of it just email me and let me know.
1) There is some evidence, although it has not been proved conclusively, that electromagnetic fields, surrounding high voltage power lines like the CapX power lines, increase the risk of childhood cancer.
2) In 1998, a 30-person panel convened by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS - a component of the National Institutes of Health) concluded — by a 19-9 vote — that electric and magnetic fields like those surrounding electric power lines should be regarded as a possible human carcinogen.
3) Studies linking EMF to cancer in children have been reported in Japan and the United Kingdom in recent years
4) A major new study in 2005 found that children whose birth address was within 200 meters of an overhead power line had a 70% increased risk of leukemia. Children living 200 to 600 meters away from power lines had a 20% increased risk. The study, which was partially funded by the power-line industry, mapped how far each child lived from a high voltage overhead power line. It compared the children who had cancer with a control group of 29,000 children without cancer, but who lived in comparable districts. Appearing in the June 2005 British Medical Journal, the study concluded there is a statistical link between EMF from power lines and leukemia. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7460
5) The World Health Organization confirms that a number of epidemiological studies suggest small increases in risk of childhood leukemia with exposure to low frequency magnetic fields. The focus of international research is the investigation of possible links between cancer and electromagnetic fields, at power line and radiofrequencies, including determining in the laboratory if there is a mechanism that would explain if there is a cause and effect relationship between EMF and cancer.
6) We want Minnesota to avoid the risk of EMF’s and cancer when there are better alternatives to high voltage power lines like the CapX proposal. The precautionary principle is a moral and political principle that states that if an action or policy might cause severe or irreversible harm to the public, in the absence of a scientific consensus that harm would not ensue, the burden of proof must be on the project proposer (here the utilities) to prove that what they are proposing is safe. They haven’t met this burden of proof.
7) The CapX lines should not be built in our communities, where we live, work and farm when there is an alternative of more distributed energy, smaller power lines with lower magnetic fields.
