Duluth News-Tribune - June 18, 2000
Project evokes the past
Todays protests over planned power lines echo infamous conflicts 22
years ago
By Steve Kuchera
News-Tribune staff writer
Twenty-two years ago, property owners rallied to stop the construction
of a
high-voltage transmission line through central Minnesota.
That much-publicized, often volatile and occasionally violent conflict
saw
Gov.
Rudy Perpich sending in state troopers to protect construction workers
and
project opponents launching a campaign of guerrilla warfare -- toppling
towers,
shooting insulators and the wire itself.
The dispute attracted international attention, inspired a
made-for-television
movie and prompted an unknown Carleton College political science
professor
named Paul Wellstone to co-author a book on the controversy.
Some of the people involved with the protests against the CU Line say it
illustrates what could happen if Minnesota Power and Wisconsin Public
Service
Corp. receive permission to build the Arrowhead-Weston line between
Duluth and
Wausau, Wis.
``We're going to go through this again,'' says George Crocker, who as a
leader
in GASP (General Assembly to Stop the Power Lines) actively opposed the
CU
Line
and, as executive director of the North American Water Office, opposes
the
Arrowhead-Weston project.
``This line has all the markings of a project that is as fraught, if not
more
fraught, with contention as the CU project,'' Crocker said. ``I do not
think
people are going to lay down and take it.''
There are differences between the two lines. The 250-mile-long,
375-kilovolt,
alternating current Arrowhead-Weston Line would be part of a national
network
of transmission lines, open to the use of any marketer buying or selling
electricity. The 427-mile-long, 400-kilovolt, direct current CU Line
brings
electricity from a coal-fired power plant in Underwood, N.D., to a
substation
in Delano, Minn., for redistribution to 29 cooperatives across the
state.
But the reasons for opposing the two projects are the same -- questions
over
need and alternatives, concern over possible impacts to health, the
environment
and property values, and anger over the fact utilities can condemn the
land
they need.
A bad first impression
The CU Line was the most contentious project Minnesota Environmental
Quality
Board planner Larry Hartman has seen in 25 years of regulating power
plants,
power lines and pipelines. The MEQB project manager on the CU project,
he
recently speculated why the project was so controversial.
``It was a combination of factors,'' he said. ``Some of the people
involved,
perhaps more than anything else, made the biggest difference. In part it
might
have been the way the utilities approached the project with the
landowners.
First impressions are important.''
In March 1978, Charles Anderson, then president of Cooperative Power
Association (which built the CU Line with United Power Association),
admitted
the utilities could have worked more with property owners before
construction
began in late 1977, after the Minnesota Supreme Court voted unanimously
to
allow the line to proceed.
``We just didn't get out with landowners and talk about it enough,'' he
told
the press. ``If we were to do it over again, we would spend much more
time on
public education about the project.''
Whether meeting with the public could have defused the conflict,
however, is
questionable.
Many had strong feelings that the line would interfere
with
irrigation equipment, would harm the environment, people's health,
livestock,
crops and property values.
The protest, which grew hottest in Grant, Pope and Stearns counties,
later
centered on the utilities' use of eminent domain to obtain easements
from
unwilling sellers.
``When it went across our land they didn't even ask,'' Tony Bartos of
Lowery
said. ``They said `If you don't sign, we'll just condemn your land.'
That
pissed me off.''
Escalating confrontations
Bartos was one of six protesters who, saying their actions symbolized
what was
happening to their rights, smeared themselves with pig manure and asked
to be
arrested in February 1978 while the line was under construction.
The incident was just one of many confrontations along the Minnesota
segment of
the line. Protesters rode horses in front of surveyors to block their
view.
Riding snowmobiles and a manure spreader they chased surveyors off
farms.
``We went out in the fields and stopped them wherever we could,'' said
protest
leader Matt Woida, of Sauk Centre. The line crosses his farm about
1/2-mile
from his house.
In early 1978 Stearns County Sheriff James Ellering asked survey crews
to
leave
because his deputies couldn't control the protesters. Gov. Rudy Perpich
sent
200 state troopers into the area to protect workers on the line. The
troopers
remained into March.
At times protesters treated the troopers to cookies. At other times
troopers
used Mace to disperse protesters; farmers used anhydrous ammonia to
disperse
the troopers.
In March 1978 someone shot at a power line security guard sitting in a
truck.
The man was hit by flying glass. Crocker, who advocated non-violent
resistance
to the CU Line, said media coverage changed after that.
``From that point on it wasn't a case of what the power companies were
doing,
but of what these people had done to that security truck and the guard
sitting
in it,'' he said.
``One of most important lessons that the opposition to the
Arrowhead-Weston
line needs to learn is that when violence is perpetrated against people,
it is
no longer an issue of what the power company is doing to you,'' he said.
``So
don't hurt people.''
Mounting publicity
Conflict and publicity didn't end when electricity began flowing through
the CU
Line on Oct. 17, 1978.
In November 1978 the Soviet news agency Tass, in
what
appeared to be a counterattack on President Jimmy Carter's human rights
campaign, covered the trespassing trial of 19 power line protesters,
including
folk singer Dean Feed. All 19 were acquitted.
In 1980, Hollywood produced ``OHMS,'' a made-for-TV movie about a farmer
and
activist battling a power company's plans to put an electrical line
across
farmland.
Ohm is a unit for measuring resistance in an electrical
circuit.
Meanwhile, in the farmland of central Minnesota, resistance to the CU
Line
continued. Insulators and the line were shot. By March 1981, 15 towers
had
been
toppled.
The guerrilla warfare ended only when it became a federal
offense to
vandalize the line and FBI agents began showing up and asking questions.
Questionable side effects
While the vandalism ended, debate over the line's impact on health and
livestock continued.
Woida said he has had more problems with cows
aborting or
not breeding since the line was built.
The state studied the impact of the line on livestock, comparing the
general
health, rate of production and number of abortions in herds near the
line to
those several miles away.
``No differences were found,'' said John Hynes, the MEQB permit
compliance
manager on the project.
Other studies found that the line did produce ions (electrically charge
atoms)
and electrical fields measurable at ground level.
But no one could prove
that
the fields and ions caused health problems.
In 1982 a scientific panel voted that it couldn't find any significant
health
risks from the line.
``After that the issue went away for us,'' said Will Kaul, vice
president of
transmission for Great River Energy (formed when CPA and UPA merged).
``That
doesn't mean people accepted it. I think a lot of people out there
believe now
what they believed 20 years ago. I think they felt that they had
exhausted all
the remedies they knew of.''
Woida's view of the CU Line certainly hasn't changed in 22 years.
``Not a bit,'' he said. ``They didn't need it. It's just a money racket.
That's
all it is.''
Bartos no longer lives on the farm he fought to protect in 1978. During
the
1980s his farm and construction business fell on hard times. He moved
three
miles away and began a fish farm.
He says health concerns over the line didn't influence his move,
although ``I
still think it's harmful.''
``I would rather live over here than over there,'' he said. ``If a guy
is a
few
miles away from the line he knows for damn sure it won't affect him.
But
if
things hadn't gone bad I would probably still be there.''
``I wish they wouldn't make any more lines,'' Bartos said. ``But I don't
know
what the hell the answer is. I guess we have to keep growing and get
more
energy.
I never figured that we needed this one, but apparently maybe we
did
because they have it going mostly at capacity.''
Crocker, however, sees plans to build more lines as an attempt by
utilities to
ensure the survival of large, traditional power plants at the expense of
conservation and the development of renewable source of energy.
``Renewable sources of power have languished because power companies
haven't
seen it to their advantage to invest in them,'' he said.
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