In the Matter of the Exemption Application by Minnesota Power for a High-Voltage Transmission Line Known as the Arrowhead Project
MEQB Docket No. MP-HVTL-EA-1-99
OAH Docket No. 10-2901-12620-2
Testimony presented by
William Osborne, Vice Chief
Pimicikamak Cree Nation
Cross Lake, Manitoba
28 August 2000
Thank you for the opportunity to address you on a very important matter of
concern to my people, the Pimicikamak Crees of Cross Lake, Manitoba.
We are aware that efforts continue to be made to portray our concerns as
ones that should and can only be dealt with in Canada. We assure our
American supporters and interested parties that Pimicikamak Cree Nation is
taking all steps in Canada to address the Canadian aspects of issues of
concern to us.
However, we are with you this evening because we believe there are impacts
for the United States about the importation of Manitoba hydroelectric power
that can only and must be addressed here.
I draw your attention to two sentences that appear on page three of
Minnesota Power's Application for Exemption:
"There are two major energy resource regions which support the energy use in
the region, in addition to the various coal, nuclear and hydro facilities
located throughout the area.
These are the lignite coal reserves located
near Bismarck, North Dakota and the Nelson River Hydroelectric system in
northern Manitoba."
As inhabitants since time immemorial, of Nitaskinan, "Our Land", today we
live with a mega-hydroelectric project that continues to devastate our way
of life and our environment. We respectfully remind you that any proposed
project south of the US/Canada border that would influence the operation of
the generating stations on the Nelson River is of great concern to us.
Pimicikamak Cree Nation's fundamental rights and interests are clearly
involved in any proposed undertaking that carries with it the likelihood
that Manitoba Hydro's electricity sales would increase, in the event the
250-mile line is constructed from Duluth to Wausau.
In a proceeding now before the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission,
Manitoba Hydro has declared secret all important data on its operations. In
this way it is preventing American citizens and Pimicikamak Cree Nation
access to information about the American and Canadian economic, reliability,
environmental and other consequences of buying its power.
Such stonewalling by a Canadian utility should be completely unacceptable,
and would be unlawful if it were an American utility, and yet it appears to
be an acceptable cost of doing business with Manitoba Hydro.
Pimicikamak Cree Nation wonders what information Manitoba Hydro chooses not
to supply to the proponents of the transmission line under consideration. We
submit that no agency in the Midwest has access to the
full range of data on the reliability and air emissions of Manitoba Hydro's
system that would determine if Canadian imports are beneficial for the North
American environment and for American customers.
Earlier this year, a Minnesota Power spokesperson was quoted as saying,
"This is only a transmission line."
Last fall, one of our representatives was shown a map of the Midwestern
electric grid and the proposed twelve-mile segment. He said it reminded him
of a spider's web. If even one section is disturbed, the entire web feels
the pressure.
This planned transmission line hardwires the Midwest to what a Canadian
church inquiry in 1999 called "a moral and ecological catastrophe". It was
referring to the wholesale destruction of thousands of square miles,
millions of acres of lake, rivers, shoreline and wildlife habitat, and to
the resulting human misery for indigenous peoples whose traditional lands,
economies, ways of life, and even our lives, are being taken.
Any further development of the estimated 5,000-6,000 megawatt potential in
Nitaskinan and elsewhere in the vast Nelson River watershed will inevitably
require more river diversions, dam construction and the flooding of more
boreal forest and river habitat.
In the early 1990's, our cousins, the Crees of James Bay, Quebec, issued a
warning to the citizens and decision-makers of Vermont concerning power
purchases from Hydro-Quebec. They engaged American experts to analyze the
proposed power purchases from an American perspective, on economic and
reliability grounds. The Quebec Crees and their experts were ignored and the
deal was signed.
Ten years later, the cost of having ignored the critical information and
analysis provided by their indigenous neighbors to the north has run into
billions of dollars and a protracted dispute in Vermont.
While we understand that the scope of this proceeding has been deliberately
narrowed, we assert that the multitude of citizens from Wisconsin and
Minnesota who are taking an interest, must alert Minnesota to the fact that
the decision you make on a proposed short section of line has implications
beyond your jurisdictional borders.
We encourage you to make the decision that is in the best interests of the
people and the environment of Minnesota. We also ask that the decision you
reach recognizes the importance of the boreal forests and rivers upon which
my people depend.
Thank you! Ekosani!
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