Alexander and Associates Inc.

On Dec. 9, I went to a public hearing in support of the oil equipment shipments. Many people were there to show their support and I had hoped to testify. Unfortunately, this particular hearing was more formal, with attorneys on either side calling witnesses to speak before the Idaho Transportation Department board. I prepared some comments and I will seek another opportunity to enter them into the record. In the meantime, I have pasted them below.

Good morning. My name is Martin Johncox, (address). I have lived in Idaho 20 years. I am currently a public relations consultant and I have always been a strong supporter of business.

According to news reports, the Chinese are ready to spend $511 billion to build up to 245 nuclear reactors and are moving forward with renewable energy as well. The Chinese are now testing a bullet train to go more than 300 mph. China already has the world’s longest high-speed rail network with 7,500 miles and is ambitiously expanding it.

In America, anyone who would propose a power plant, wind farm, refinery or high-speed train will find the process long, expensive and discouraging. Maybe that’s why we have zero miles of high speed train and not enough juice to power one if we did. We’ve become a nation of consumers and borrowers, no longer a nation of builders and producers.

We are different from China in one important way, however: We have freedom and democracy, while they have oppression. And we may use our freedom to promote development and prosperity, or deny it.

The opponents of the megaloads have many valid points. The weight will stress our roads. Road closures will reduce business in the area. There are serious safety and environmental concerns. I believe Conoco Phillips and the state must address all these concerns. That means adequately recompensing people along the road and the state for any repairs it must make. We can and must hold Conoco Phillips to this standard: They must leave the road and communities along it in better condition than they found them. The good news is, this is fully doable if we choose to do it. The concerns of the residents and businesses along the route should be a template for safe and fair use of the road – not a means to kill this project.

The irony isn’t lost on me that many people at this hearing drove here in cars powered by fuel from these very same sand fields. Using gas doesn’t mean we necessarily approve any proposal, but it does obligate us to think about our shared responsibility in delivering these resources, and how important these resources are to us in this very room.

I hope these meetings conclude with a commitment to accomplishment, recompense and action, and that the shipments commence as soon as possible. Our ability to remain a prosperous, advancing nation depends on the outcomes of meetings like these.

A number of years ago, when I was an Idaho Statesman reporter, I was fortunate enough to cover a speech by Daniel Kemmis in Boise. Kemmis is a former Montana legislator and mayor of Missoula who is a consultant and known for his ability to find consensus in difficult situations.

Kemmis’ book “Community and the Politics of Place” (he signed my copy!) is influential in public policy circles and has some important lessons for the current controversy about hauling massive oil drilling equipment through Idaho’s mountains.The Spokesman-Review sums it up the issue well:

ConocoPhillips Corp. wants to send the loads, which are so wide they’ll take up both lanes of the two-lane road, across the route immediately to get the equipment to its refinery in Billings, Mont., though it still must receive permits from the state of Montana.

They’re just the first mega-loads proposed for the route, however; Imperial Oil/ExxonMobil has a proposal in the works for 207 giant loads to start traveling this month and continue for a year, to run from the Port of Lewiston through Montana and up to its Alberta oil sands project in Canada.

Residents and business owners along the route sued to block the loads, saying the Idaho Transportation Department violated its own regulations in issuing permits to ConocoPhillips.

I’m not expert on Kemmis, but I think I know enough to apply some of his ideas here.

One of the leading principles in “Community and the Politics of Place” is: The best solutions come from citizens on opposing sides working out their own solutions – compromising and sharing responsibility – and then presenting their contract to officials, who may enforce  it. Too often, citizens dump their problems in the laps of public officials, when the public officials may not have a stake or the ability to craft a good solution. As Kemmis notes, there is precious little listening going on in a public hearing and no effort by stakeholders to resolve their problems among themselves. The results satisfy no one and produce continual lawsuits, hearings and challenges.

The responsibilities and interests are clear. Idaho relies out-of-state fossil energy for about 80 percent of its electricity, according to Jessica Ruehrwein of the Sierra Club (counting electrical generation and gasoline transportation energy) Idaho is eighty percent fossil fueled, yet we have zero fossil resources! We in Idaho depend completely on other states to extract and send us fossil energy for electricity and transportation and we therefore have a responsibility to do our part to help that process. For their part, the oil companies that want to use Idaho roads have a responsibility to not burden Idaho residents, to recompense them adequately if they must burden them, and leave the route in better condition than they found it.

Opponents of the plan are pressing for public hearings, where they hope to delay or stop the shipments. Instead of court battles and attempts at administrative delays, I think the people along the route, environmental groups and other concerned people should have a conference with the businesses wanting to ship the equipment. Business owners along the route and state officials could present information about how much lost tourist reveue the shipments would create, how to deal with environmental concerns, how to protect the roadway and how to deal with liability. Oil companies may need to post a higher bond and create a special fund for affected residents and demonstrate the ability to address a worst-case disaster.

Opponents will say this reckoning will be too complex, but it is no more complex than developing, extracting and refining fossil fuel, a process from which Idahoans are spared (although they pay millions to fund it buying gasoline). Oil companies will say citizens are trying to place exorbitant costs on business, even as these companies stand to profit greatly by selling fuel.

Both sides are right and both have legitimate claims. As someone who believes in collaborative democracy, I believe both sides could resolve their differences, continue getting what they need and serve the common good.

I see it as a sign of acceptance and maturity when we can discuss the plusses and minuses of a proposal. But Rocky Barker’s Aug. 25 story about wind development in Idaho was fairly boosterish and carefully avoided mention of the tradeoffs of the energy source he was writing about.

Before anyone labels me as anti-wind, I’d like to clarify that, like the majority of Americans, I’m an “all-of-the-abover.” Our country needs niche sources such as wind, solar and biomass, as well as baseload power (power that is predictable and reliable, which includes fossil, nuclear and, sometimes, hydro). Everything has a role and deserves our support. Since April 2007, our PR firm has been a public relations consultant for Alternate Energy Holdings Inc. , giving us the opportunity to intensively research different energy types.

In the public policy area, however, support needs to follow careful consideration of the tradeoffs of each source – and each source has tradeoffs. Fortunately, we are well-informed about the tradeoffs of traditional power sources, but here are some for wind that may come as a surprise:

• According to Wikipedia, 60 to 80 percent of the time, wind farms produce little or no power (tinyurl.com/windoutput). They may provide power when it’s not needed and not provide when it is needed, making wind difficult to integrate into a power grid that demands reliability. Barker’s story mentioned the new wind farms will power for 40,000 homes, but should have added, when the wind blows enough.
• Wind farms need huge areas; about a tenth of a square mile per megawatt, according to the American Wind Energy Association (tinyurl.com/windareas). A 600 megawatt farm would need about 60 square miles but if it produces power just 25 percent of the time, you would really need four times that area (240 square miles) to produce 600 mw with any reliability. A typical baseload plant reliably produces that much in a couple of square miles.
• According to many news reports worldwide, wind turbine neighbors, mostly farmers, report sleeplessness, irritability and depression due to infrasound and light flicker (windturbinesyndrome.com).
• Industrial wind turbines may be 450 feet tall and 650-foot models exist. By comparison, the tallest building in Idaho (U.S. Bank Plaza) is 267 feet. Barker’s Aug. 25 story didn’t mention the acreage of the project or the heights of the 122 towers.
• According to the National Academy of Engineering, wind farms require high energy input, 11 times the steel and 5 times the concrete of a comparable nuclear plant, as well and hundreds of miles of access roads and transmission lines (tinyurl.com/windinputs).
• According to the American Bird Conservancy, each wind turbine kills up to 7.5 birds per year, or 40,000 nationally, mostly songbirds and raptors. (tinyurl.com/birdkills)
• According to the Caithness Wind Farm Information Forum, wind energy has killed 63 people due to blade and ice throws, turbine fires and accidents (tinyurl.com/winddeaths); by comparison, dam collapses have killed about 75,000.
• According to the National Academy of Sciences, renewables receive much more subsidy than baseload sources (tinyurl.com/energysubsidies), given the amount energy produced.
• Wind energy often faces strong opposition from citizens and environmentalists. To his credit, Barker has reported on this. The Snake River Alliance, for example, is famous for spouting its would-support of wind development, but it is too timid to testify at local meetings in support of embattled wind developers.

Balanced reporting should consider these facts alongside the great advantages of wind power, as it will result in a better-informed public. We can’t rely exclusively on renewables to power our civilization. Intermittent sources have an important role to play, but we need baseload to back them up. We really need it all.

As wind becomes less exotic, news stories will report the full picture, as it should with any legitimate and useful energy source. Our support for wind will become stronger when we fully understand its limits as well as its tremendous benefits.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve been spending a fair amount of time in Elmore County collecting petition signatures and otherwise finding and networking with people who support our proposed nuclear plant. I like the work because I’m pretty extroverted, but there’s a sense of urgency. Wednesday, April 22 will be a make-or-break day for the plant effort, as the Elmore County Commission will hold a hearing about our request to rezone land for the plant.

Today I spent the afternoon and early evening in Hammett, a small farming town of a few hundred people between Mountain Home and Glenns Ferry, and a few miles from the site of our proposed nuclear plant.  There’s a lot of hardship in Hammett and for a Boise PR consultant used to a comfortable life, it was an eye-opening experience.

In Treasure Valley, as hard as we have it, I think we’re largely insulated from the worst of the economic downturn. To really see a town suffering, spend some time in Hammett. Given the events of the day, the comments of some of our opposition seem downright callused toward people who are struggling to get by and find work.

I went door-to-door and to the few businesses that were open. Closer toward the Interstate, one woman and some friends stood around a car in front of her house; the engine wouldn’t start and they were waiting for a friend to come and help.

“Will there be work there for women?” she asked me in Spanish. “I worked at the potato plant for 13 years and they laid me off when it closed. It’s really hard to find any work now.”

I told her we will make it a point to hire from Elmore County and if someone has a clean background, a good work history and completes training, we will have a job for them in construction or operations – if and when the plant is ever open (my mother is from Mexico and speak fluent Spanish). I’m paid to communicate and I do it well, but I really felt helpless. I could offer promises and hope, and my assurance I’m working as hard as I can to get the plant built, but I could do nothing to help her life immediately.

I heard loud banging around a group of mobile homes. I found two men repairing a car body with a hammer. They signed my petition, but told me they didn’t have much faith the plant would get built. Companies have let Hammett down before, they said, by not hiring much locally, or closing their factories.

“We’ve got to get something built around here,” said one of the men.

Another woman told me Hammett is always neglected, not getting the services and infrastructure it should have, and believed that would continue even if the plant were built.

“If the plant opens, it will just be a pissing match between Glenns Ferry and Mountain Home to get the benefits,” she told me. “Hammett won’t get anything.”

I’m typing this blog in the comfort of my home in Hidden Springs. Today, I was an outsider in a town where people are having a hard time coping with job loss and recession. I spent  the day getting some peoples’ hopes up. Now, it’s time to deliver and devote all of my energy to the goal of developing the power plant, so that our team and the Elmore County Commission will come through for the people of Hammett.

I attended a presentation last night sponsored by the United States Green Building Council, Idaho Chapter, where Snake River Alliance discussed energy policy. One of my clients is Alternate Energy Holdings Inc., which is seeking to build a nuclear plant in Elmore County, and the SRA vituperatively opposes the project.

It’s clear most decision makers and members of the public check the “all of the above” box when it comes to energy policy; nearly 7 in 10 Americans support nuclear energy, as well as all of Idaho’s congressional delegation and President Obama. The nuclear industry has a long history in Idaho and is a crucial part of the state’s economy.

The SRA is finding itself in an increasingly isolated anti-nuclear stance and to make up for that, it’s pitching itself as a renewable energy advocacy group to the public and officials that it’s lobbying. The SRA is hoping the feel-good aspects of renewables will lead to greater acceptance of their feel-bad stance on nuclear.

The SRA’s lobbyist, Liz Woodruff, left out some important points in her presentation, though. While she praised Idaho’s 2007 energy plan and advocated for its greater implementation, she avoided mentioning that the plan does, in fact, call for nuclear energy to be a part of our energy mix (add the Idaho Legislature to the list of groups that check the “all of the above” box). As someone who believes we need to pursue all low-carbon and carbon-free energy sources, I also support the 2007 Idaho Energy Plan – in its entirety.

Woodruff also avoided mention that the public and fellow environmental groups are frequently obstacles to energy production and transmission in general, and to renewables in particular. When neighbors show up to oppose a proposed wind farm, the opposition is just as tangible as when they turn out to oppose a nuclear developer. Until the SRA can bring itself to show up to these public meetings and stand up to a roomful of angry neighbors on behalf of a renewables developer, its support for renewables will remain at the 30,000-foot level, unless it is has the pleasurable task of speaking to sympathetic groups.

That brings me to my next point: People are happy to check the box that says “all of the above” when it comes to energy. When you ask them to list what they wouldn’t mind living next to, the answer winds up being “none of the above.” Public process is a crucial component of democracy and can be used to obstruct as well as accomplish. The promoters of energy sources of any kind need to keep in mind that sometimes, their strongest opponents will be the people they are trying to serve.