New Government, New Hope?

Prince Edward Islanders find ourselves with a new slate of government players after the May 28, 2007 election. There is therefore some reason to be hopeful that we will yet have our concerns addressed. The problem of how high-voltage transmission lines compromise not only community welfare, but possibly community health as well, will not go away, much as the previous administration had hoped it might. Therefore, any smart new MLA or intelligent new policymaker would be well advised to make the construction of transmission corridors a priority for any real energy plans in the future.

Options and Solutions

There are many options available to address our concerns. The private landowner option we were working toward, at the behest of Maritime Electric, has been secured. But even if this were to fall through there are two other routes around our community, and they use provincial land.

1. The first is the decommissioned railroad bed (the “rails to trails”). This was tabled at the public information meeting at the end of March 2006. There is nothing, I repeat, nothing, wrong with using this public right of way for this transmission line. Transmission lines run on the rails to trails through Charlottetown, and the public uses these trails more than any other in the province. And, there are no property values to compromise along this infrastructure.

2. The government of Prince Edward Island owns three contiguous pieces of woodland that could easily serve the purpose. (I invite PEI government officials to do as I did, and get down to the land registry office and consult the orthomaps a little more closely.) These are NOT part of a protected old growth stand of Acadian forest in the area (known locally as the “Townsend woodlot”). These options are also available as a viable bypass.

It is so frustrating, given all of these solutions, that there has been such a failure of leadership thus far in our efforts to seek equitable redress and good representation for Grant Road/Gowan Brae.

Moving the Poles

And how exactly does one “move the poles”? According to Maritime Electric employees, the same ones who provided me with the two statements of purpose and goodwill posted here on May 27 (Post on "Power Plays"), moving the transmission line can be accomplished with minimal cost in three steps. The new transmission line is constructed, the utility schedules a “blackout” so that the new connection can be rerouted, and then they convert the old transmission line into regular residential electrical service infrastructure, by cutting the large poles down to size.

These solutions are well known among policy-makers and decision-makers in this province. One wonders, therefore, why they left us to the whim of Maritime Electric/Fortis over the past year to broker a deal with private landowners? To reiterate a point made earlier: we need a government that is going to protect all communities on Prince Edward Island.

The utility and the province lob the blame for the transmission line back and forth between them, each pointing to the other as the party responsible for our dilemma. This is no way to pursue an energy policy, and it is no way to run a province. Instead of requiring small rural communities to bear the cost and suffer the harm of these transmission lines, I believe it is more appropriate that the “partners” in any new energy installation should bear the cost of creating a safe corridor away from residential areas. We must do so if this province wishes to be a true “leader” in wind energy development in this country. We must do this if we want to remain a province which values community engagement, believes in pursuing development ethically.

The Bottom Line

If the province will not require Maritime Electric to pay the $100,000 to move the transmission line, then as the other partner in the Eastern Kings wind energy project, the province must pay for the transmission line bypass itself.

There was a lot of debate about ‘leadership’ in the course of the provincial election. Many aspects of good leadership were discussed, mainly focusing on how leadership was about making “the tough choices.” Well, that may be so, but the right choice depends on how widely and actively any given leader searches for possible solutions. I will leave new government leaders with this thought on the subject, which I hope they will consider in the weeks and months ahead:

Sometimes, leadership is about leaving things better then how you found them.

Abandoning a Community

When we last left this blog narrative, we were closing in on an explanation for a dramatic change in attitude on the part of Maritime Electric.

In the fall of 2006, they acknowledged the seriousness of the problem they created for the residents of Grant Road/Gowan Brae. The previous post documented how the utility promised to move the transmission line in November 2006, but when a new route was secured, they claimed that they could not “rationalize” the extra $75,000 it might cost.

However, despite all their correspondence indicating a willingness to ethically conduct themselves, despite their stated desire to mitigate the harm brought by their transmission line, and despite the fact that their route was determined via a deeply flawed public “engagement” process, ultimately, Maritime Electric’s profit margin proved to be of paramount importance. In their eyes, it was more important than our collective community loss.

What were some of the reasons for this shift? The previous post promised to outline some reasons for this change in tune, and they are listed below. Readers should consider this a foray into decoding the “Fortis Ethic” of corporate conduct, and form their opinions accordingly.


“Cost Containment” Explanations

If one gives Maritime Electric management the benefit of the doubt, and assume that they were committed to pursuing a bypass last fall, then something must have happened within the corporation which changed this commitment. On this premise, two reasons spring to mind explaining their about-face on this issue.

1. The month of March likely marks the utility’s financial year-end. There seem to have been cost-overruns for the transmission line. Last summer, the estimate for construction of the transmission line was 3.575 million (see post 2, on April 29), whereas their cost now is calculated at about 3.75 million (see post 1 on April 22). This indicates they overspent on the project by about $175,000. Given how we’ve seen them balk at spending $75, 000 on us (see post 1 on April 22), even this proportionally small overrun would provide sufficient economic incentive for them to drop the bypass. They’d already gone over their budget, and so someone in senior management decided made this decision.

2. Last winter, after we had secured this renewed commitment from the utility, another community in western Prince Edward Island heard of our efforts, and decided to try and move a transmission line being built to serve the Ventus wind energy installation at the western tip of the province. Between November 2006 and April 2007, the utility considered that the real cost of helping us would potentially set a precedent they would have to apply to this case, and they broke their commitment to us to avoid this.


“Media Manipulation” Explanations

It is possible, on the other hand, that they had no real intention of reopening the bypass as an option at all. Given the shift in tone and the ultimate outcome of our efforts, it seems quite possible that Maritime Electric simply engaged in a public relations process for political reasons.

1. Keeping residents at Grant Road/Gowan Brae occupied with the process of finding a “reasonable” bypass route ensured that the opening of the Eastern Kings industrial wind installation in January 2007 would pass without our protest, without our criticism, and without incident. It is not unreasonable to think, given their about-face in recent weeks, that they engaged with us for a few months simply to ensure that the opening of the wind energy installation would not be compromised.

2. A final consideration is that the provincial election, which came to a close on May 28, provided them with a perfect opportunity to walk away. The utility erased all ambiguity about their intentions, and how they defined bypass “rationalization,” on April 20, 2007. This was only a few days before the provincial election was called, which everyone in the province knew was coming. Perhaps utility management knew that our community’s ability to get media or government attention in such a context would be difficult, if not impossible. They were, unfortunately, quite correct.

So, this is what happened at Grant Road/Gowan Brae, a small and close little community on the outskirts of Souris, Prince Edward Island, over 2006-2007.

All of us at Grant Road/Gowan Brae continue to hope for a solution to our problem and we really do not consider this episode in our history closed. We are still resolved to hold Maritime Electric and the provincial government of Prince Edward Island accountable for what happened to our once beautiful and safe community. I hope the utility and the government officials involved have thought long and hard about what it means to radicalize a whole community of new critics of their poorly-considered energy policies.

Certainly, I have been both radicalized and deeply angered by what unfolded in Grant Road/Gowan Brae over the past year and half.

Stay posted for some thoughts on good government and power policy.

News - Letter to the Editor

The narrative of this blog is interrupted again to post community action news-- a recent Letter to the Editor.

This was published in the The Charlottetown Guardian on June 2, 2007. It comes on the heels of a dramatic change in government on Prince Edward Island following the election on May 28. It is our hope this new administration will address the issue of the power lines in Grant Road/Gowan Brae, require the utility to move the line away from our residential area, and help and protect rural communities on Prince Edward Island.

It is our intention to resubmit the community petition to the new premier, Robert Ghiz.

* * *


The Weakening Rural Voice

Editor,

I applaud the fortitude and foresight of the Charlottetown City Council, who recently decided to block a proposed Mount Edward Road cellphone tower. In the city, we take it for granted that residential community needs take precedent over development.

But a similar battle which took place in my home community of Gowan Brae (near Souris), turned out very differently.

The provincial government has worked with Maritime Electric to establish the power grid for high-profile Elmira Wind Test site. The grid is serviced by large poles (30 per cent higher than average), with significant voltage coursing through them. Unfortunately, the “planned” transmission route cuts through the beautiful and safe community where I grew up.

For one year, Gowan Brae residents voiced concerns over the link between cancer and electromagnetic radiation and the depreciation of land values in the community. The latter is significant, as land is the main financial asset for most. We have brought these issues to Kings County MLA Andy Mooney, Environment, Energy, and Forestry Minister Jamie Ballem, Premier Pat Binns, and other government representatives. These individuals have merely left us to work with Maritime Electric and find a bypass for the transmission line.

In recent weeks, the company has decided changes to this line can not fall outside their project budget. They, too, have walked, leaving a rural community to pay a collective price so that they may meet their projected profit target.

Islanders might well question the monopoly privilege enjoyed by Maritime Electric, who are ostensibly willing to put profit over community welfare. But more alarming, is how residents of this community were left without benefit of protective policy or government representation in this process.

I am a current resident of Stratford. I know that no-one would “plan” a transmission line through here, or the City of Charlottetown. But there is no protection for my mother and her neighbours in Gowan Brae, who are left feeling frustrated, manipulated, disempowered, and abandoned.

We need a government that is going to protect all communities on Prince Edward Island.

Signed,

Dylan Mullally
Stratford

Power Plays: Between "Reasonable" and "Rational"

Back on November 17, 2006, when my brother Dylan and I met with Maritime Electric, the utility employees described how they approached several landowners in the process of securing a bypass route. At this meeting they identified weak landowner cooperation as the most significant challenge they faced. However, they also, to our surprise, reaffirmed their commitment to finding a bypass. We discussed the idea of burying the lines, with the idea this would mitigate the visual impact. It would make my mother and others who were more worried about the EMR health risks happy by “burying” their concerns as well. The utility representatives at this meeting were open to discussing all possibilities. After getting their verbal agreement to make greater efforts to mitigate the harm the transmission lines would bring to our community, I asked for and received a written statement confirming this intent.

It is posted here:

Dear Sasha:

"As we discussed at our Friday meeting Maritime Electric is most certainly willing to explore alternative transmission line routing around the Mullally and O'keefe residences [[subsequent correspondence on November 21 amended this statement to include "the residential areas on the Grant Road Hill"] and, yes, if the land under discussion is suitable for an alternative route then we are willing to consider compensation up to $3000\acre. Hopefully our opportunity to speak with you on Friday and take you through all of the steps that we've taken to date to attempt to deal with the concerns of residents in the area has demonstrated that we have, indeed, acted in good faith to date and we will continue to act in good faith. let me know if you'd like to proceed with a meeting with the parties involved [these are landowners who might be willing to an easement].

"I've attached a picture of a "cable to overhead structure" and as we indicated at the meeting this type of structure is unsightly and would run counter to the objectives of keeping the viewscape as unencumbered as possible. Two of these type of structures would be required: one for overhead wire to cable transition on one end and one for cable to overhead wire transition on the other end. A wooden structure would have to be heavily guyed and would not look any better.

[here, in the original, they provided a picture of this structure]

"Further this type of construction is very expensive relative to overhead construction and therefore it is very difficult for us to rationalize the cost of this alternative.

"So we'd prefer to work with you on the "short cut" alternative above. I'll await to hear back from you on the next steps."

Regards,

[Signed, Manager, Engineering]

I then went up home and met with several landowners, taking significant time away from my work to address this important issue. At the end of November, I had another meeting with the utility, a meeting that included senior management. This meeting provided an opportunity to specifically discuss other options for the bypass not considered by Maritime Electric, and identify other landowners who might be amenable to allowing easements. In particular, I pointed out that one landowner, one whom the utility had approached in the spring of 2006, was not given due time to consider the option, and should be approached again.

The Maritime Electric officials and senior management at this meeting were responsive, and after reviewing these options, they confirmed the utility’s willingness to move the poles and revisit the bypass. Again, they provided me, upon my request, with a second statement confirming their intent. It is posted here:

Dear Sasha:

“We appreciated the opportunity to sit down this morning and review new options to have our transmission line bypass the Grant Road area where your family, and other residents, have concerns about their view scape and diminished property values because of the presence of our transmission line.

“You brought two new potential overhead bypass routes to our attention that could be negotiated with landowners on the north side of the Grant Road. We also discussed an underground cable option which we both had some reservations with respect to. We really appreciated the extent of your preparation you had for the meeting--both with respect to the extent of conversations you’ve had with community members and your mapping of potential routes in the area.

“You’ve agreed to share with us the contact information for these new land holders and also to act as a facilitator, if necessary, in the negotiation process and we are appreciative of this.

“As soon as you provide the contact information we will pursue the agreed upon #1 option by contacting the two new landholders and asking for a meeting at their earliest convenience to secure their intention to provide an easement for the transmission line. If this should fail we will then pursue option #2. We will also go to Grant Road as soon as possible to inspect the proposed routes to ensure there are no issues with the topography of the land that would interfere with our construction or future maintenance\emergency access to the line. We commit to keeping you posted on our progress (when meetings are scheduled, what the outcome was, and what our next steps and related timing will be). When you feel it necessary we can meet again to review the new information.

“Sasha, at the beginning of this process Maritime Electric said it would consider any reasonable proposal to address the concerns of residents in the area. We meant it then and we mean it now. We have acted in good faith from the outset and we certainly will continue to do so moving forward and will make a sincere attempt to make one of the above two options work.

“We look forward to receiving the contact information from you and working with you toward a bypass solution for the residents of the Grant Road.”

[Signed, Vice-president, Customer Service]

Please note that in both statements provided above, the focus is on demonstrating “good faith” and establishing goodwill. Goodwill is the word that came up most often in our correspondence and in person at meetings. In the face of government stonewalling, the responsiveness of the utility was very heartening. We decided to work in “good faith” with them, take their statements at face value, and put our trust in them.

So let us see if this trust was well-placed. In the above correspondence, you can see that the utility committed to consider “reasonable” routes and that any process of “rationalization” was very much in the background. What any “rationalization” might mean was, moreover, rather obscure at this juncture, overshadowed as it was by references to “good faith.”

By April 2007, “rationalization” would come to mean this: that the bypass must cost the utility no more than the cost of going along the highway which cuts through our community. But this convenient qualification is absent from the above two statements provided at the end of last November. The term only features above once, with reference to the utility’s consideration of the underground cable. And even in this case, they did not rule out this option last fall, even though it would have definitely cost more than following the route above ground! I am sure careful readers will agree that it is extremely telling how, in the fall of 2006, the utility only said they had a “preference” for working to find an above-ground route.

Their position would harden considerably over the months which followed.

Fiscal considerations were a secondary consideration in our joint attempts over December, January and February, to identify willing landowners for the bypass route. The utility found it convenient to point to community uncooperativeness as the real barrier to a successful bypass, as if money were not the problem at all. Reviewing the statements above, you will see there is some reference to topography, and concerns as to the suitability of the terrain. However, a mid-December email I received from Maritime Electric’s Manager of Operations stated that, after viewing the area suggested for a bypass, that the terrain involved in the two routes under consideration above was suitable for their purposes; it was, in fact, “one they could use.”

Fiscal considerations and difficulty with the terrain featured nowhere in our subsequent debates over using other public-land options. When, in early 2007, I questioned senior management about the possibility of routing the transmission line on three contiguous pieces of government woodland that would enable a transmission line bypass, the objection was not that it would be too expensive, or too difficult to clear, or that government itself was unwilling, but that management “wanted to pursue one route at a time.”

My correspondence with Maritime Electric officials, collected since the end of November 2006, is voluminous. In a previous post I have indicated how carefully I have re-read and gone through this material to see when things started to fall apart—to see when a seemingly cooperative and caring corporation apparently decided to unilaterally drop a stated commitment to bypass Grant Road/Gowan Brae with their high-voltage wires. Having sifted through this archive, I have located the point where their tune shifted. It happened in March. To be exact, the first time that it was intimated that “rationalization” must take place, and that this process of “rationalization” was defined as a zero differential cost re-routing, was on March 13, 2007. This is approximately one week after we finally, successfully, identified landowners who would allow the poles to cross their land to complete the bypass. This perfectly reasonable route was negotiated and brokered in full cooperation with utility employees assigned to this project.

I am a fairly alert and careful person, and I noticed the inclusion of “rationalization” by senior management in email correspondence on March 13, and I questioned use of this new term as soon as I opened the message. Senior management then tried to claim consistency by referring back to the first, original statement given above. But, can any readers see any requirement of a revenue-neutral bypass option in either of the statements?

No, neither can I find one.

So, having established this inconsistency on the part of the utility, and having shown how they again wasted a considerable amount of community time, and my personal time, it still remains for one to explain this frustrating shift. What happened between November and March? What happened to shift the discourse from one which emphasized goodwill, good faith and commitment to one which put money and profit before all else?

Some reasons were given to me on April 20. Having had a number of weeks to think about this, a few other explanations come to mind as well. This post is lengthy enough, so I’ll discuss them all next week. And following from and rising out of these explanations, we will see the beginnings of a clear blueprint for working around such problems, and avoiding these conflicts, in the future. Those individuals who find themselves with new office at that time (there is currently a provincial election in Prince Edward Island) might give them due consideration.

News -- A Community Petition

We interrupt the narrative of this blog to post some community action news.

One of my neighbours recently confirmed that the following petition, sent to the office of the Premier, and copied to the Minister of the Environment, Energy and Forestry, the CEO of the PEI Energy Corporation, the President (Customer Service) of Maritime Electric and the CEO of Fortis, has been received and signed for by all parties.

Three community members, one of whom was my brother Conor, secured signatures from 100% of permanent residents in the area (two renters abstained).

It cannot be said that this is not a concern for everyone in our community.

Our petition is below.

* * *

Community of:

Grant Road / Souris River Road / New Zealand / Gowan Brae

Objection Registry

to the Maritime Electric High Voltage Transmission Line

We, the undersigned, hereby register our objection to the route of the Maritime Electric high voltage power transmission lines, erected through our community in the Fall 2006. Our concerns are summarized:

1. Our community, a longstanding residential area, is one of the more scenic areas on Prince Edward Island, with a spectacular view of the bay, ocean, and rural countrysides. Many of the residents in our community have purchased properties and homes with this attraction in mind; many have chosen to live raise families in the area because of the peace, quiet and safety the locale affords. A small rural subdivision is currently being developed for these reasons. Transmission lines which were routed through our community in the Fall 2006 dramatically detract from the desirability that this location offers.

2. Many in our community are concerned by the health hazards of electromagnetic radiation; all are affected by public perception of the effects of EMR (regardless of interpretation of the research), which significantly compromise property values.

3. We believe that alternative options were not adequately addressed logistically or from a cost-benefit perspective. We petition that resources be allocated for an alternative route for this section of the transmission line, and the problem immediately rectified.

[Signed by all residents of Grant Road/Souris River Road/Gowan Brae/New Zealand]

Community Disengagement, Part II

Last November (2006), the stories of what went wrong with the planning and execution of the original bypass gave us all considerable pause. However, even as Maritime Electric continued to work on erecting the transmission line through our area, we resolved not to let the matter rest. This questionable corporate decision to proceed against community wishes would not proceed without a fight, at least. When one engages a powerful monopoly utility, it is good to call in support from others with power. Normally, the obvious starting place is with your elected representatives and government officials. I am sure other neighbours made these kind of overtures. On November 7, my brother Dylan, my brother Howlan and I wrote to the CEO of the PEI Energy Corporation, copying the correspondence to the Minister and Deputy Minister of the Department of the Environment, Energy, and Forestry, as well as the office of the Premier. These individuals are all key players in this wind energy endeavour. The PEI Energy Corporation worked and is working, on behalf of the province, in partnership with Maritime Electric to service Islanders and other markets with wind energy generated in this province. I also forwarded my letter to the community’s member of the Legislative Assembly.

We were brought up short by the shift in their attitude and tone as compared to six short months previous. All correspondence and concerns expressed in the spring of 2006 to government officials were acknowledged, and received with an apparent willingness to provide information, engage in dialogue, and work around community objections. By the fall, when support was really required, we were, to put it bluntly, ignored and stonewalled.

This was the most discouraging element of the whole process. For instance, my brothers and I received the same dismissive email from the CEO of the PEI Energy Corporation on November 17. Responding ten days after our original correspondence, this individual wrote to say, “I have concluded that there is some misunderstanding of the role of the PEI Energy Corporation…it has absolutely no responsibility for the transmission line feeding the wind farm. This responsibility rests entirely with Maritime Electric who has obtained its approvals from the Island Regulatory and Appeals Commission and the Department of Environment, Energy and Forestry. The Corporation was not a "partner" in the applications for the approval of the transmission line project.”

I disagree with the convenient distinction made in this correspondence. The two entities are, in fact, partners in bringing the electricity generated at this installation to the marketplace. That the Corporation did not actually construct the line does not detract from the fact that they are responsible for its construction. The utility, who is indeed their partner in this endeavour, is not acting in good faith. Whether they like it or not, this reflects on the PEI Energy Corporation and it reflects on the wind energy installation as a project.

On behalf of the Department of the Environment, Energy and Forestry, we also got a letter, not from senior management to whom our correspondence was copied, but from the Acting Environmental Assessment Coordinator. He wrote to us on November 15 to say that when the government was informed of the prospect of the failed bypass and reviewed the activities of Maritime Electric on October 17, that they decided to take no action. As far as I have been able to tell, no one at the Department contacted anyone in the community as a part of this review. They did not seek any other input or insight into why the bypass failed. The Acting Coordinator wrote to us, saying that at the end of October, “Discussions took place around what other actions Maritime Electric had attempted in order to try to procure another alternate route and the department was satisfied that all reasonable options were exhausted.”

Recent months have proven, however, that “reasonable options” were not “exhausted” at all, and a phone call to any community member would have revealed this.

My mother and I visited our local member of the Legislative Assembly at that time. He promised to take the issue and problem to the Minister of the Environment, Energy and Forestry, but he has never gotten back to us as to the outcome of that conversation. I wrote to his office thanking him for his time and advocacy and asked him directly for an update on his meeting with the Minister, and received no further reply.

Feeling stymied and blocked by this weak attempt to explain and defend what had happened, my family, finally, hired a lawyer. He sent a letter stating our concerns to the Deputy Minister of the Department of the Environment, Energy and Forestry. Our letter was sent out by fax on November 17, 2006, and it was copied to Maritime Electric’s President, Customer Service.

We have never received any acknowledgment that this letter was received, or read, by any one at the Deputy Minister’s office. No feedback. Nothing.

Apparently the letter from the Acting Environmental Coordinator on November 14/15 was meant to deal with us, by simply stating that “the department was satisfied that all reasonable options were exhausted.”

This abandonment of the people of Grant Road/Gowan Brae is by far the most discouraging element of the bypass story. On the one hand, it indicated an unwillingness on the part of government officials, apparently also our elected representatives, to protect the interests of Island citizens. This is certainly bad enough. On the other hand, an even more troubling consideration is that they, when faced with the prospect of a conflict with the utility, found they were unable to protect the interests of Island citizens. What kind of government puts the interests of a monopoly utility before the interests of constituents? Either one that has assessed its ability to defend Islanders and decides it is too weak, or one that counts the voters in a small community and decides it does not care. This is a low view of politics, but they are the only two explanations I can come up with. If any government officials are reading this, I would like them to know that I would be overjoyed to be proven wrong on this point. Sadly, however, I feel I am right.

And now for one of the more interesting developments of this story. Stonewalled by our government officials and elected representatives, my family did, at this juncture, get an email from Maritime Electric on November 14. It invited us to meet. We did, on November 17, the same day that the letter went out from our legal representative. The contrast between utility responsiveness and government passivity and inaction could not have been more stark. My family, neighbours and I were surprised when Maritime Electric expressed regret at the failed bypass negotiations, and agreed to move the transmission line.

That is right: they agreed to move the transmission line.

They agreed to do this on November 20, and confirmed this intent on November 30.

They provided me with two written statements confirming this intent.

This is why we on Grant-Road/Gowan Brae have been working so hard since last fall to secure a reasonable alternate route. We have done this. Now the utility, with the apparent sanction of the government of Prince Edward Island and the PEI Energy Corporation, is dodging their commitment. Right at the moment of success, they put forth the excuse that they suddenly cannot “rationalize” the very route they have worked with us to secure.

(We are still using private landowner easements, but this time there is compensation. I have made my ethical qualms about this process known in the previous post, so there is no need to restate them here. Readers will note that a future post will discuss the need for designated transmission corridors.)

But this “rationalization” is a new step. It is one which was never a part of their process, either stated or implied, until very, very recently in all their correspondence and communications since last November. I have gone through it all with a fine-tooth comb, and in the next post I will document, point by point, the way the utility danced away from their reaffirmed November commitments. I will then put forth possible explanations for the timing of this shift. Maritime Electric’s change in tune was subtle, but it is as unmistakable as a guitar string that goes just a little bit flat in the middle of your favourite song.

If utility officials knew more about rural Prince Edward Island, they would have known that community dances are a lot of fun, but you’d better mind whose toes you step on unless you want a fight to break out.

Community Disengagement, Part I

When we realized the transmission line was soon to be a reality on Grant Road/Gowan Brae, my family had a series of discussions about what to do. We determined to get some information on what had transpired over the very quiet summer leading up to the fall crisis, and we decided to find out who was responsible for the failure of this important community commitment. I spoke at length with several neighbours about the bypass activities, then I gathered public documents, met and corresponded with two government employees and various individuals at Maritime Electric. Over time, this is what I have put together.

In April 2006, government officials left the utility to address our problem with the proposed route for the transmission line. Maritime Electric approached the issue by trying to secure easements (a process similar to getting a right of way, but with more options and privileges) over privately-owned land in the area. To make a long story short, they secured verbal agreement with four parties, surveyed a route, paid for a required botanical analysis to ensure the bypass would not disturb rare flora, manage wetland ecosystems, stream crossings and tree canopies. They revised their transmission line extension document, and submitted a new undertaking proposal to government officials, who approved the change.

Here is a copy of the new document:

http://www.gov.pe.ca/photos/original/melectricEIS.pdf

The Appendices of this document are much more extensive than the first, underscoring the emphasis on ecological protection required of off-road bypass construction.

The Grant Road/Gowan Brae bypass is on page 2 of Appendix A.

However, it seems clear that Maritime Electric did not maintain clear lines of communication with all landowners over the summer, and did not have the level of community agreement that they thought they did. Early fall 2006, when the transmission line construction was already well underway, Maritime Electric broke off discussions with one family over their easement terms and shifting ideas of land use, and our bypass initiative fell apart.

I also learned how, with the transmission line coming down the Grant Road, Maritime Electric put the onus on local people to find another landowner to complete the route. This put considerable time pressure on the entire community to come up with a solution, and it put considerable social pressure on several other people approached to provide a fallback route. Not all of these individuals were community residents. One was temporarily working elsewhere. My neighbours told me that, with time slipping away and Maritime Electric crews waiting up the Grant Road, some landowners were given only days to consider the prospect of a high voltage incursion onto their properties. Ultimately, the individuals approached at the last minute were not comfortable with the prospect of signing over land under these conditions without time to consider the impact. Maritime Electric, citing government-imposed deadlines to meet, abandoned the bypass. They worked round the clock after this decision, erecting most poles by the end of October.

People learned of the bypass failure in a variety of ways. Some, the utility called in person. Others learned through word of mouth. Some learned when they actually saw the crews working in front of their homes. Regardless of how they found out, the effects among the people of Grant Road/Gowan Brae were largely the same: we were all feeling deeply frustrated, disempowered, and angry.

When Maritime Electric left Grant Road/Gowan Brae in the fall of 2007, not only did they leave a transmission line behind them, but they left a wake of ill will. The last minute problems with easements, after a summer of inactivity at the community level, coupled with a brinkmanship approach to getting other local people to sign over land for the transmission line, created much social strife. The demoralization was palpable.

People looked back on the events leading up to the advent of the poles, and community consensus was that the eleventh-hour effort of the utility was meant to distract us all from their overall weak level of commitment to broker a fair deal and protect community interests. Many were, and are, of the opinion that Maritime Electric never had any real intention of pursuing a bypass. We all look at the overall money spent on this wind energy installation, and look to the good care taken to protect the interests of individuals who lived close to the turbines. By contrast, what has happened to our community because of the transmission lines stings like a very sharp slap.

The above narrative quite clearly illustrates several ethical problems with how the utility approached the situation. Let me identify at least two of these as revealed thus far.

Ethical Problem 1: Maritime Electric created a problem which it ultimately took no responsibility for solving.

The utility put forth (and the government approved) a flawed transmission route, and then put the onus on local residents of Grant Road/Gowan Brae to find an alternative when we pointed out the potential harm. In this process, the utility relied on local individuals and community spirit to a.) provide them with options, b.) make preliminary inquiries, c.) do most of the communication and legwork and, d.) encourage all to cooperate. Anyone who “buys into” such a process implicitly takes on ownership of the success or failure. Any integrity a community broker might have with local people is ascribed to a utility that has done little to deserve it. I found myself playing this problematic role when I joined in with this endeavour last fall, and I intend to blog about my discomfort over this in the weeks to come.

Adopting this stance also allowed Maritime Electric to remain conveniently non-committal. They could distance themselves from any “problem” with “uncooperative” people, because any lack of cooperation would be seen as evidence that “the community” itself was to blame for the failure of the bypass.

And why should private landowners give up land when other options are available? Readers might be interested to learn that there is government land which might very well have served the purposes of the bypass, which the utility did not consider at all. (More on this, with maps, to follow in another post.)

Ethical Problem 2: Maritime Electric pursued a route over parcels of private land without offering fair market value for this incursion.

When reviewing the above process, it is clear that the utility, quite intentionally, tried to avoid costs associated with paying landowners for using their land. Any discussion of compensation in the spring of 2006, was put well in the background by Maritime Electric officials. I did not learn until very recently that the utility did not offer any compensation to the four original landowners whom they approached to provide easements over the spring of 2006. In recent weeks, when I probed this issue with utility management, they told me that their employees assured all landowners that rates of compensation among participants would be equitable; if one landowner got any money, they all would get a comparable amount. But the utility at the same time admitted that, under the terms of option agreements signed by three landowners in the spring of 2006, these landowners were allowing the transmission line to cross their land for free.

I find it very difficult to believe that Maritime Electric thought this kind of agreement would hold together. And, it irritated me to no end to learn, as part of my meeting on April 20, that Maritime Electric had had a budget for easement compensation in the spring of 2006. One cannot help but wonder if things might have turned out quite differently if they had used it a year ago.

It should be noted again how the presence of community people like me, and others before me, “working with” Maritime Electric puts the utility in a strong negotiating position when it comes to easement discussions.

The reader of this blog might, at this point, ask, “Where is the provincial government in all of this?” The province is a partner, with Maritime Electric, in the new energy initiative this transmission line was supposed to service. What did they do to represent the community, and be an arbiter this conflict?

That side of this story will be told in Community Disengagement, Part II. The continuation of this post will itemize attempts to contact provincial authorities over the fall of 2006, and try to make sense of the disappointing results of our efforts to find help from this quarter. I will also discuss a third ethical issue with how the transmission bypass was reopened and pursued over the winter of 2006 and spring of 2007.

Community “Engagement”

I first participated in the public engagement process on March 31, 2006. A week or so before, our family had heard of the transmission line grid expansion though our community from a neighbour who was, quite rightly as it turned out, very concerned by the prospect. He had newly arrived to the Grant Road and had been attracted by the beautiful and peaceful surroundings. The advent of the transmission lines would compromise both. My mother called me and filled me in on this potential problem, and told me there would be an information meeting about the East Point industrial wind energy installation at the end of March. I was living temporarily in New Brunswick, but I wrote to the Deputy Minister of the Department of Environment, Energy and Forestry, and asked for more information about this transmission line. He forwarded my inquiry to the CEO of the PEI Energy Corporation.

I received this as part of an email explaining route rationale, as well as an indication of the size and shape of the poles:

http://www.gov.pe.ca/photos/original/dingwell_mills.pdf

(N.B.: The above document also shows that the original budget for the transmission line was 3.575 million (p. 4). This point will become important in a future post.)

This document shows three routes were considered to take the electricity generated by the turbines from East point to the Dingwells Mills Substation. One potential route runs along the north shore (Route 16). A second runs along the south shore (Route 2 and Route 16). A third route, the one chosen, cuts right through the middle of the province, through the centre of the county.

When the impact of the transmission line became clear, my brother Howlan and I put our concerns to paper, writing directly to the CEO of the PEI Energy Corporation. This was on and around April 1 (April Fool's day). We clearly communicated how coming through our community would do harm, devaluing property and harming the beauty of the place. We pointed out that the north shore route would encourage more wind energy installations in the future (it’s a windy part of the province), and the south shore already had a transmission line. Why were they introducing a new transmission line through our community? The document above makes passing reference to “technical and economic reasons” which ruled out the north and south routes (p.1). This was not enough of an explanation, in our view.

My mother Paulette and brother Conor attended the March 31 information meeting in person, stated our family concerns, and added some personal ones. My mother, a retired nurse and former occupational health and safety instructor, was and is a very health conscious person. She is very concerned about the possible carcinogenic effect of electromagnetic radiation; the high voltage line would ultimately generate 138Kv (which the document above indicates is twice as much as a residential service grid). She also wrote to Minister Jamie Ballem after the meeting and explained her position and her fears in very direct, even emotional, terms.

I should note that, at this planning stage, which highlighted “community engagement,” all of our correspondence was acknowledged. We received answers to most concerns. Our worries, which were aired in person at public meetings, were heard in a very polite and responsive manner. It seemed our concerns were being taken seriously. Everyone felt good.

I should note as well that there were aspects of the transmission route chosen that recommended it. If you look at the maps provided in the appendices of the above document (pp. 6-8), and if you know the area, the transmission line for the most part follows along dirt roads and avoids residential areas. Except ours, that is.

We are on page 7.

On the other hand, a cynic might point out that by cutting through the centre of the province, the transmission lines are as far away from the windy coastal areas as possible. If the utility were ever to be contracted to extend the transmission grid from another new wind energy installation (and the current provincial government plans to make PEI a leader in wind energy), this placement would ensure longer branches to the central transmission line; potentially more dollars from said contracts.

Perhaps I’m misreading the situation, however. Maritime Electric is a partner with the Province of Prince Edward Island in the wind energy installation at East Point, and says that the line transmission was their investment in the project. On the other hand, it seems that their relationship with Ventus, the owners of a private wind energy installation in the western end of the province, is not a partnership and the grid extension to service it was done by commission.

Have I mentioned that Maritime Electric holds a virtual monopoly on Prince Edward Island?

Detailed explanations of these arrangements and partnerships are not part of the public domain, although I will continue to search for them. Either way, Grant Road/Gowan Brae was the community caught in the middle—a seeming “oversight” in the planning process. Still it’s important to emphasize that there were ways around us. One neighbour, who was in attendance at the March 31 meeting, tabled the suggestion of running the line along at least part of the old railway bed, and avoid our homes that way. The decommissioned railroad on Prince Edward Island has been converted into a popular recreational biking, hiking and snowmobiling trail (called the ‘rails to trails’), but as far as I know, no one lives along the route in question. The transmission line could avoid our homes via this government right of way.

Government officials did not seem to like this idea, though, citing public use (more on this point, too, in a blog post to come). Nonetheless, they asked utility representatives on the project to try and find an alternate route to take care of us. Maritime Electric says that the matter was, at this point, left entirely with utility employees.

These individuals seemed to put a plan together quickly. By the end of the first week of April 2006 my mother emailed me to say that an alternate route had been found. Hooray!

It was then that I naïvely made my first mistake. Feeling good about the public process in this province, I didn’t even think to ask for details and considered the problem dealt with. I set into a busy spring and summer of fairly intensive travel. I’ve recently earned a doctorate and I’m on the hunt for a university tenure track job, part of which means I have to hit the conference circuit every year. I visited my mother over the summer occasionally, staying in Souris for a week or two in August, and life went on as usual. The fall saw more travel for me, especially in late September and October.

The first week of November my mother called me to tell me the bypass was a bust and the transmission line was coming down our road.

I’ll continue this story, without going into gossip and hearsay about what went wrong with easement negotiations, in my next post. The focus will instead revolve around the questionable ethics of putting the “responsibility” for solving this problem on a community that had no part in creating it. And it will discuss how government officials, who did play a major part in creating it, just walked away.

Power in Prince Edward Island

Maritime Electric, a subsidiary of the international power company Fortis, has put up high-voltage power lines that seriously compromise what may very well be the most beautiful place in all of Prince Edward Island (PEI), Canada. The house near Souris where my mother lives sits on top of a hill overlooking the winding Souris River and Northumberland Strait. She is surrounded by forests, farm fields and rolling hills—with what was, no doubt, one of the most spectacular views on the entire Island. More importantly, she is surrounded by good neighbours, all of whom I know to be good people, and most of whom I have known my whole life. I have grown up and live in the nearby capital city, but I still consider these people my neighbours, even though I see many of them only a handful of times a year.

My neighbours and I are caught in the middle of a high-voltage transmission line expansion, built to service a new wind energy installation at the eastern tip of the province. Fifty-five foot poles now tower over a cluster of homes on the Grant Road hill, where my mother’s house is located, and wind down the road through the families who live at the junction of the Souris River Road and the New Zealand Road, at Gowan Brae, which is situated at the head of the River. The poles are very tall, and have thick high voltage power lines strung across them. From our perspective, they cut through our community like a barbed wire fence. Many in our community have serious concerns, not only about the aesthetic impact of this infrastructure, but the health hazards posed by the electro-magnetic fields to our families, and the significant devaluation of our properties the transmission lines bring with them.

It is surprising that the Prince Edward Island government allows these inappropriate power line incursions into rural residential areas. Certainly they have turned a blind eye to our efforts to keep them out. Our community in question is small, which is one explanation. Certainly none of us are wealthy, which may provide another.

What makes our situation so particularly devastating is it was not necessary. My neighbours and family have actively participated, in person and in writing, in a year-long engagement process with the utility and the provincial government. One year ago, Maritime Electric committed to pursuing a bypass away from the homes on Grant Road/Gowan Brae when they planned this new stretch of the transmission grid. The province and the utility, partners in this wind endeavour, quelled community concern by promising to pursue an alternate route—the lines would still come through our community, but they would build along a bypass away from our homes. For one year, the onus was on our community to come up with a route. Guided by criteria outlined by the utility, with the cooperation of several utility employees, we have persevered through some significant setbacks, and have recently succeeded in securing agreement with four very kind local landowners. The stunning generosity and community-mindedness of these cooperative people has been the one bright spot in an otherwise dark and frustrating process.

At the eleventh hour and at the brink of hard-won success, Maritime Electric “ran the numbers” and decided the bypass they worked with us to secure was too expensive after all. At a meeting on Friday, April 20, I was told that the differential cost was about $75,000. This is approximately 2% of the cost for the entire transmission line expansion, estimated at about $3.75 million. According to previous conversations with government employees, this number is less than one half of the amount they spent on a botanical analysis and environmental assessment process (required by provincial policy) to safeguard rare flora and ecologically unstable wetlands/streams.

Less than $100, 000 to save and protect a community is a marginal cost when compared to the investment involved. The utility's decision to bow out, after a year-long commitment and for such a small investment in goodwill, beggars the imagination. The province's refusal to acknowledge our problem is astounding, to put it mildy.

The first iteration of this blog introduction, which I shared with both the utility and government, was extremely angry. I have decided, however, that my anger over what has transpired is beside the point, as larger issues are at stake. As someone who has been close to this issue since last November, I have become aware of very problematic "power relations" in Prince Edward Island. So, I’m going to blog my way into the public domain with this story. I intend to accomplish several things over the life of this blog:

1. This blog will document the story of the abortive Grant Road/Gowan Brae bypass, and show how “efforts to demonstrate goodwill” on the part of Maritime Electric were, in light of this incredible outcome, insufficient to protect rural homes caught in this expansion. Clearly, more than "goodwill" is needed.

2. This blog will critique stated rationales for abandoning the people of Grant Road/Gowan Brae put forth by the utility, and it will systematically analyse the government policies and practices that allow them to do this.

3. This blog will outline the failure of the provincial government to provide leadership and advocacy to our rural community--one of several rural communities on Prince Edward Island bearing the largely hidden burden of high-profile energy initiatives.

4. This blog will provide a forum for discussing what may be called the "inconvenient truths" associated with power line construction. How exactly are they rationalized? Why do rural communities find themselves so disempowered in these situations?

5. Even if we in Grant Road/Gowan Brae ultimately fail to protect our homes, this blog will help other communities. Through the information relayed here, they will be able to learn from our experiences, and be alert, ready and able to provide effective grassroots resistance when the power lines come down their road. The failure to secure a Grant Road/Gowan Brae bypass is a bellwether event that bears close consideration for everyone with a rural home, or anyone who cares about rural PEI.

The way my late father, Dave Mullally, told the story, he was out hunting rabbits one fall day when he came out of the woods at the top of the Grant Road, and “just couldn’t get over the view” of the far-off town, the river, the ocean and the rolling potato fields. My father loved Prince Edward Island. He and my mother, Paulette, bought a lot and a piece of this beautiful place from the O’Keefe family in 1973. They built a house and spent their lives as part of the community on the River, raising five of us in the home at the top of the hill, where my mother Paulette and brother Conor still live.

Last Sunday, April 15, around the time when Fortis/Maritime Electric “ran their numbers” and decided 2% of an infrastructure budget was too great a price to pay to be a good corporate citizen, would have been my father’s 62^nd birthday.

6. This blog is a birthday present to his memory.