Fight the Power
Grass roots activists unite against utility
(First of two parts)
By Rob Zaleski - The Capitol Times
December 18, 1999
On the afternoon of June 12, Tom Kreager pulled into the driveway of his secluded
two-bedroom country home in Marathon County and was surprised to see a stranger
ambling across his property.
The man turned out to be a site surveyor from Wisconsin
Public Service Corp. of Green Bay. And when Kreager asked what he was doing, the man
calmly explained that WPSC and another utility --Minnesota Power Co. of Duluth, Minn.
-- were planning to construct a massive 345-kilovolt, 250-mile high-voltage transmission
line across northern Wisconsin.
Such a line was needed, he said, because Wisconsin was
on the brink of an energy crisis. This project -- which the utilities call "Power Up
Wisconsin'' -- would provide desperately needed backup power for businesses and
citizens of the state. Unfortunately, he added, one of the proposed routes would split
Kreager's 43-acre property in half.
The laid-back, 36-year-old Kreager, who has an
associate degree in electronics from North Central Technical College and works as a
copier service technician in Wausau, says he was concerned but hardly alarmed by the
news.
After all, though it's camouflaged by woods, there's already a 345-kilovolt line
cutting across the southeast corner of his property, about 600 feet from the home that he
shares with his wife, Marge, and their 9-year-old son, John.
But the more he investigated
the proposed line and its potential effects on the property owners in its path -- Wisconsin
Public Service Corp. estimates about 1,100 will be directly affected -- the angrier he got.
He already knew what a grotesque sight a string of 90- to 130-foot-high, 345-kilovolt
towers can be. And how noisy they are in humid weather.
"Like being in the dentist's
chair -- in the days of the old drills,'' quips Ed Garvey, the wily Madison attorney and
former gubernatorial candidate who is representing the grass-roots organization Kreager
founded called Save Our Unique Lands (SOUL).
But Kreager was shocked to find out
that power from the line -- which would back up an existing line from Minnesota to Eau
Claire -- would go not to northern Wisconsin, but primarily to the southeastern corner of
the state and perhaps even Chicago.
He learned about the hotly debated issue of "stray
voltage'' that is produced by electrical transmission lines. And that there are still
conflicting reports about whether living near such lines increases one's chances of getting
leukemia and other cancers.
Kurt Gutknecht, editor of Wisconsin Agriculturist magazine,
reinforced those concerns when he spoke to SOUL members and other concerned citizens
last fall.
"If it were my family's health, there is no way on God's green earth I would let a
utility company build a high voltage line within several miles of my home,'' he said. "And
there is no way I'd trust the measurements and advice of the government, the PSC (Public
Service Commission) or any individual of any state agency. Their record speaks for
itself.''
After hearing that, the sleepy-eyed, soft-spoken Kreager concluded that if this line
is approved, he'll move.
"I've got to be concerned about the health of my son and my
wife,'' he said during an interview at Garvey's Madison law office. "I'd have to sell at a
loss and get the heck out of there.''
It's infuriating, he says, because he truly believes the
line isn't necessary -- not with four power plants and several smaller peaking plants
expected to be built in the state within the next five years. What's more, considering all
the new technology just on the horizon -- such as fuel cells -- this line could be
a dinosaur just a few years after it's completed. At a cost, he points out, of between $125
million and $175 million.
The real shocker, however, was finding out that northern
Wisconsin residents essentially are defenseless in the matter.
That is, if the three-member
Public Service Commission decides the line is needed, the utilities have the right to assert
eminent domain -- which means they can take whatever land they want as long as they
provide proper compensation.
Kreager and other SOUL members say they knew
governments had such power, but for-profit corporations?
State Rep. Marty Reynolds,
D-Ladysmith, couldn't believe it either. But he checked the state statutes and "sure
enough, it's been in there forever,'' he says. "Not just utilities, but railroads, telegraph
companies, just about every business under the sun has the authority of eminent
domain.''
Reynolds thinks that's absurd. So he's drafting a bill that would bar for-profit
businesses from having such authority.
But does he actually expect it to pass?
Not really,
he admits.
"My guess is that it will be perceived by Republicans as anti-business,'' he
says. "I'd argue that it's not anti-business, it's pro-property owner, pro-taxpayer.''
In any
event, if there was a defining moment in the budding controversy -- the moment
when Kreager decided he would fight the line regardless of how much time it took or
how futile it might seem -- it was when Wisconsin Public Service Corp. official Larry
Borgard told an overflow crowd at a public meeting in the Marathon County courthouse
that it didn't matter how widespread the opposition was, the utilities would press ahead
anyway.
"He actually said that,'' Kreager marvels. "It was unbelievable arrogance on his
part.''
By then, however, Kreager and his wife had already planted the seeds for what has
evolved into one of the most remarkable grass-roots movements this state has seen -- a
movement that now includes about active 2,000 SOUL members, a large percentage of
whom are farmers.
It is also a movement that, interestingly enough, has been accelerated
by another piece of modern technology: the Internet. Members e-mail each other daily,
Kreager says, and get informational updates on the group's Web site,
www.wakeupwisconsin.com.
In mid-June, a week after spotting the Wisconsin Public
Service Corp. site surveyor on their property, the Kreagers and several neighbors began
going door to door, handing out information leaflets, in towns and cities throughout
northwestern Wisconsin.
"And I can count on one hand the number of people I found
who are in favor of this project -- out of literally thousands,'' Kreager says.
When more
than 100 showed up for an organizational meeting at the Mosinee Town Hall in early
August, Kreager says he realized that he had tapped into a vast reservoir of anxiety -- and
that many of those people were just as determined to stop the line as he was.
Since that
first meeting, no fewer than eight of the 11 counties that would be directly
affected -- "and more townships than you could shake a stick at'' -- have passed
resolutions opposing the line, Kreager notes.
And in mid-November -- a day before the
utilities formally applied for the project -- two busloads of SOUL members showed up at
Public Service Commission headquarters in Madison and dumped off more than 4,000
letters, faxes and e-mails protesting the line.
Now, almost six months since becoming
involved, Kreager is convinced that if SOUL can educate the public about what's at stake
here -- not just people leaving their homes, but the potential damage to thousands of
acres of woods and wetlands that lie in the line's path -- it can stop the project.
Similar to how environmentalists succeeded in blocking -- at least temporarily -- the
proposed Crandon mine.
In fact, SOUL members suspect the projects are linked. The
proposed line goes from Duluth to Wausau, but includes a loop to the Rhinelander area,
just 30 miles northwest of the mine site.
"At first they claimed that spur was needed for
increased tourism in the Rhinelander area -- I'm not kidding you,'' Garvey says.
"When you ask them about it now, they don't like to talk about it. But they've helped us
again because now all the Crandon mine foes are cranked up as well.''
To be sure,
Wisconsin Public Service Corp. is very much aware of the mushrooming opposition.
Which is why it went on the offensive last month and hosted informational business
luncheons in Wausau, Ladysmith and Tomahawk. The company's position: Why is the
line necessary?
"Because the system we have now is basically the same one that was built
back in the late '60s and early '70s,'' says Dave Valine, Wisconsin Public Service Corp.'s
transmission engineer and construction supervisor for the project. "Electrical load growth
has pushed the use of the Minnesota to Eau Claire line to the limits of what it can
possibly do.''
Wisconsin was lucky to escape without blackouts the last three summers, he
says.
"And the folks in northwestern Wisconsin, they're not an island up there supplying
their own power. They're connected to the grid just like anybody else. So the reliability
problem affects the entire state.''
It's true, Valine says, that much of the power from the
line would go to southeastern Wisconsin -- because that's the most heavily populated part
of the state. It's also true that some electricity might be sold to Chicago.
But it works both
ways, he points out.
"We purchase power from Chicago utilities quite often.''
Valine says
he's bewildered by claims that the line might be obsolete within a few years.
"I'm aware
of no technology that is going to replace large generators and transmission lines and
distribution lines,'' he says. "I guess in order to do that, every load source would have to
have its own independent source of power. So transmission lines will be around for a
long time.''
He also scoffs at the charge that the line was designed to link up with the
Crandon mine. It's true, he says, that Wisconsin Public Service Corp. several years ago
filed an application to serve the mine if and when it's approved -- just as it does for any
potential customer.
"But this line has nothing to do with that,'' he insists.
As for Larry
Borgard's statement that the utilities would proceed with the line regardless of how
many people opposed it, "that's absolutely correct,'' Valine says.
He notes that he recently
received a call from a man demanding to know why the Wisconsin Public Service Corp.
would do such a thing. Valine says he responded that if a utility backed off every time
there was controversy, we'd all be in serious trouble.
"We wouldn't be building new
generators, we wouldn't be doing any maintenance on our hydro plants, we wouldn't be
putting in any wind turbines because there's a tremendous amount of opposition there,
too,'' he says.
"The lights would be out. You wouldn't have power in your office right
now.'' Power politics: Kreager, for his part, contends that the utilities are engaging in
scare tactics. At the same time, he emphasizes that SOUL isn't some fanatical anti-growth
organization. On the contrary, he believes its goals are both modest and reasonable.
For
instance, it has asked the Public Service Commission for money to hire an intervenor,
for public hearings in every county that's affected by the line, and for assurances that no
closed-door meetings occur between utility executives and PSC staff members on any
matter related to the line.
Finally, it wants the PSC to seriously consider the various
alternatives. Kreager says, for example, that clean, efficient, combined-cycle,
industrial-sited, natural-gas-distributed generation in sizes of 100 megawatts to 250
megawatts would be a welcome addition to any industrial park.
“If the utilities took that
route, I'm convinced you wouldn't hear boo out of one citizen,'' he says.
However,
Kreager admits his biggest fear is that, in the end, the Public Service Commission's
decision will be based not on the facts, but on politics. More to the point, that the three
commissioners will be heavily influenced by the man who appointed them, Republican
Gov. Tommy Thompson.
And that's coming from someone who has always voted for
Thompson -- yes, even when the governor was opposed by Garvey in '98, Kreager
confesses with a grin.
The reason for such suspicion, Garvey says, "is because the PSC
has been so cooperative with everything the utilities want.''
In this case, Wisconsin Public
Service Corp. argues that the line is needed for regional reliability, he says.
"Well, if
regional reliability means we ought to help Chicago, is there some other way we might
do this?'' he groans. "Like local generation of power?''
"It's easy to say this whole thing is about keeping the lights on,'' he says. "But if it's only
about keeping the lights on, why won't they look at anything else?''
PART 2: The north country movement builds.
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