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What needs to be done to stop wildfires in drought-killed forests.
A century of fire suppression followed by the worst drought in recorded history has put California’s forest landscapes and water supply at risk.
WITH 17 LARGE wildfires in California igniting in 24 hours this week, October is shaping up to be a brutal month for wildfires, as it often is. It’s too soon to know what caused multiple conflagrations spreading across Northern California’s wine country, but elsewhere in the state dead and dying trees have been the subject of much concern. The five-year drought in California killed more than 102 million trees on national forest lands. That is a gigantic problem in itself that will lead to huge wildfire risks in the future and big changes in wildlife habitat.
With that huge number in mind, it is easy to forget that the forests were already in a sorry state. It’s now widely understood that a century of misguided – but well-intentioned – policies over the past 100 years produced forests that are too densely packed with small trees and too vulnerable to possibly catastrophic fires.
Water supplies are also a concern, because the forests are nature’s water-storage sponges. They capture snowfall and release it slowly, helping Californians survive long, dry summers. But there’s also a concern that overgrown forests consume too much water, and that thinning some forests could generate more runoff.
A new report by the Public Policy Institute of California proposes some different approaches to begin chipping away at the problem. It recommends some changes in state law and new contracting practices, among other things. It also suggests some changes in public attitudes.
To learn more, Water Deeply recently spoke with Van Butsic, the study’s lead author. Butsic is a land system scientist with a Ph.D. in forestry; he works as an assistant cooperative extension specialist in the University of California, Berkeley, Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management.
Water Deeply: How are California’s forests doing in the wake of the drought?
Van Butsic: The drought, coupled with the last century of management actions, caused a huge pulse in tree mortality. There are always dead trees in the woods, but the additional dead trees in the environment due to the drought is about 15 million a year.
One hundred years ago many, many large trees were harvested. Then we have a century of fire suppression, so we take fire out of the equation. So new trees are coming back and they’re not burning. Then, about 30 years ago, we stopped harvesting on most national forests. So we have a condition where the forests are of a much higher density than they’ve ever been before. Then we have the drought, and lots of trees on the landscape are susceptible to bark beetle outbreaks due to lack of water.
Water Deeply: How much additional prescribed fire is needed to bring the forests back to a healthy state?
Butsic: We didn’t quantify that ourselves. But what I would say is, the statistics we’ve seen from a number of good scientists have put the number of additional acres that need to be treated at somewhere between 200,000 and 500,000 per year. So a very large amount. The numbers in those studies come from a historical look at what was normal 100 or 150 years ago. That’s more than a doubling of what’s going on now. So it’s a substantial increase. I want to say that right now the Forest Service is doing somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 per year.
Water Deeply: There’s also a need for more mechanical thinning, or logging. How do we get past the controversy over that?
Butsic: One thing that has happened in California is sort of a distrust of mechanical thinning. Often, when the Forest Service or private landowners say they’re doing mechanical thinning, certain environmental groups think that’s code for clearcutting. One thing we try to say in the paper is this is a valuable tool and it needs to be on the table if we want to get this work done. So making sure mechanical thinning is not written off as code for clearcutting is going to be important if we’re going to manage forests.
Water Deeply: How do we ensure that it’s not clearcutting?
Butsic: There are very strong forest practice laws in California. My understanding of the current regulations governing forest management on federal lands is that in Forest Service Region 5, which California belongs to, it’s really nearly impossible to harvest trees [with a diameter] over 30in (76cm). So these trees are not really at risk, I would say, as long as the Forest Service follows its own recommendations. And yet this is still a stumbling block in conversations about mechanical thinning. People are still very worried about these trees because they’ve seen in the past some large trees disappear. That’s a difficult situation to work with. The laws are in place to protect those trees, and yet people don’t really trust them.
Water Deeply: You recommend state and federal land management agencies justify their continued fire suppression. Why do you suggest that?
Butsic: Most ecologists would agree the long-term suppression of fire has led to a change in forest structure, and probably a decline in forest health. Typically, when agencies do any activity that might cause environmental harm, they need to justify it. We don’t see that for fire suppression. And there’s good reason why you wouldn’t do this on a case-by-case basis. If a fire breaks out around a house, you want to go and put it out. But making sure agencies explain their management choices around wildfire would lead them to use some of their tools, like managed wildfire, more often.
Water Deeply: You report that state law treats wildfire and prescribed fire differently in regard to air quality. Is that still appropriate?
Butsic: There’s a growing body of evidence that prescribed fires are less harmful to humans than non-managed wildfires, because they burn at lower severity, typically. And we know an area burned with a prescribed fire is less likely to burn at high severity in the near future. So clearly, there are long-term air quality benefits to prescribed fire.
But with prescribed fires, there are short-term costs caused by regulation. There’s a lot of planning that needs to go into conducting a prescribed fire for air-quality reasons. And the air-quality reasons are real. We’re not saying people with asthma are not affected by smoke. But we can manage it with prescribed fire and know when the fire is going to happen and know that in the future, we’ll have less risk of severe wildfire. Or we can just leave it to chance and, eventually, we’ll probably get a severe wildfire anyway.
So treating those differently under state law is just problematic.
Water Deeply: What kind of additional mechanical thinning are you calling for?
Butsic: We think mechanical thinning can be really useful in a few ways. If you’re near homes or near roads, mechanical thinning has a very key role to play in those instances. The other is where there are logs that could be harvested that could offset the cost of other treatments. Prescribed fire and managed wildfire are both costly.
There is a number of studies that show mechanical thinning with removal of some sawlogs can be a net profit in certain areas, and the largest trees we looked at removing in the report are 16in (in diameter).
Water Deeply: So why isn’t it happening?
Butsic: There is a number of barriers that we’ve identified to getting the work done. Part of it is the history of distrust. One roadblock is that it is somewhat risky for leadership to try to do these big treatments. If you’re going to do big prescribed fires or let wildfires be managed, there’s risk to the leadership that things could go wrong. And if they do, they look bad. So I do think these groups do not have a risk-taking culture. That’s just not the Forest Service culture. I do think that’s probably hindered them a little bit.
Another barrier is there still are issues with the infrastructure. In some parts of the state, there just are not great places to take the material: sawmills and biomass plants. Some people have said that’s the main roadblock. I’m not sure we agree with that.
Water Deeply: Will these things improve water supply?
Butsic: We think there’s real potential. There’s probably more uncertainty in that science than in other areas. But we do think there’s real potential for the maintenance of the quality and quantity of waters we have today under a healthy forest regime versus an unhealthy one.
Water Deeply: What’s the public’s role? Do we need to be more open-minded about prescribed fire and some kind of logging?
Butsic: I think understanding the role of fire and the necessity of it in the landscape, having the public appreciate the role that fires plays in keeping forests healthy, is something we could improve upon. We need to build the social license to do treatments.
The media often portray fire in the forest as a total destruction. After a fire goes through, it’s not pretty. You see a lot of charred and dead trees. It’s not an appealing landscape. But understanding the long-term importance of having that disturbance on the landscape is certainly something the media could help educate the public on.
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Justices tee up arguments in water wars, rebuff Blankenship.
The Supreme Court has said it will hold oral arguments in two major battles among states over water rights.
The Supreme Court today said it will hold oral arguments in two major battles among states over water rights.
In one case, Texas argues that New Mexico is violating the Rio Grande Compact by diverting water before it reaches the Lone Star State. The other is part of a long-running interstate water war between Florida and Georgia.
Justice said they will hear arguments in both cases "in due course."
The conflict between Texas and New Mexico involves a 1938 compact approved by Congress to apportion water in the Rio Grande Basin.
Texas says the compact mandates the diversion of a certain amount of water to New Mexico's Elephant Butte Reservoir. The state argues the water must be allowed to flow from there unimpeded through southern New Mexico into Texas.
But Texas, where rapid population growth and drought conditions have put a strain on water supplies, says New Mexico is illegally diverting water before it crosses the border.
Although the United States is not a signatory to the compact, the Obama administration had filed court documents supporting Texas' claim.
The government says it wants to both protect its obligation to deliver water to Mexico and make sure Texas gets its fair share.
New Mexico moved to dismiss the suit for failure to state a claim under the 1983 compact's terms. The state says the deal didn't require it to guarantee water deliveries to the Texas border or to prevent diversions after ensuring water gets to the Elephant Butte Reservoir.
New Mexico says its only obligation is to deliver water to the reservoir. From there, the state argues its laws govern distribution within its borders.
But the Land of Enchantment suffered a blow when a special master appointed by the court, A. Gregory Grimsal, recommended that justices deny its motion.
"The equitable apportionment achieved by the 1938 Compact commits the water New Mexico delivers to Elephant Butte Reservoir to the Rio Grande Project," Grimsal wrote. "That water is not subject to appropriation or distribution under New Mexico state law" (Greenwire, Feb. 10).
The special master also recommended that the Supreme Court hear the U.S. claims even though the high court doesn't have exclusive jurisdiction.
Today the court agreed to deny New Mexico's motion to dismiss and said it would hold oral arguments on the United States' and Colorado's exceptions to the February special master report.
The Justice Department in July filed a brief taking issue with New Mexico's statement that the compact and the special master's report took away its sovereign immunity.
New Mexico is not required to cede ownership of Rio Grande water but rather is required to administer state law in accordance with the compact, DOJ argued.
And DOJ rejected Colorado's argument the federal government is only allowed to intervene in the legal dispute to the extent needed to protect its treaty obligations with New Mexico (Greenwire, Aug. 15).
Southeast water wars
The Supreme Court today also said it would hold oral arguments in the ongoing Southeast water wars. In that case, a court-appointed special master has recommended that the Supreme Court deny Florida's request that it put a cap on Georgia's consumption of water in the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River Basin.
The special master found that the court couldn't show that a cap on Georgia water use would actually result in more water flowing into the Sunshine State.
That's because the Army Corps of Engineers, which was not a party in the case, controls water flow in the river basin system through a system of five dams and four reservoirs. Florida has objected to the recommendation, arguing that Army Corps involvement is not essential to its case (Greenwire, June 6).
Blankenship conviction upheld
Justices today denied dozens of other petitions, including former coal executive Don Blankenship's attempt to overturn his conviction for mine safety violations.
Don Blankenship. Brianhayden1980/Wikipedia
Blankenship was convicted for conspiring to violate federal mine safety standards following the 2010 Upper Big Branch mine explosion in West Virginia and sentenced to a year in prison. The 2010 mine explosion killed 29 miners and was the worst such disaster in decades.
Blankenship appealed the conviction to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld the decision. He took his appeal to the Supreme Court after his release from prison.
The former CEO argued in part that a lower-court trial judge erred when instructing a jury to convict him for his failure to prevent others from violating mine safety laws and that the lower courts mistook "reckless disregard of the law" for "criminal willfulness."
DOJ, though, had urged the Supreme Court to uphold the conviction. "The Upper Big Branch mine had a history of safety problems," DOJ said in an August court filing (Greenwire, Aug. 30).
The government wrote, "Petitioner knew about the safety problems at Upper Big Branch because he maintained 'close supervision of mine operations and staffing.'"
Twitter: @apeterka Email: areilly@eenews.net
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Public interest groups decry EPA's utility-friendly move on coal ash.
A last-minute notification from the EPA left opponents with almost no time to weigh in on the disposal of a coal-power byproduct laced with toxics and tied to spills that have cost billions of dollars to clean up.
At 7:51 p.m. on Sept. 14, Lisa Evans’ evening was interrupted by a call from the Environmental Protection Agency. Their after-hours message: An extension granted earlier had suddenly been rescinded, and public comments regarding the overhaul of state regulations on coal ash — one of the most voluminous forms of toxic, industrial waste in the country — were now due in barely four hours, at midnight.
Evans, an attorney focusing on hazardous waste at the environmental law organization, Earthjustice, was helping coordinate comments on behalf of 50 groups. The last-minute notification from the EPA left her, and by extension, the public, with almost no time to weigh in on the disposal of a coal-power byproduct laced with heavy metals and other toxins and tied to spills and leakages that have cost billions of dollars to clean up.
To public interest groups, the proposed changes to coal ash regulations — which would give states broad “flexibilities” in their oversight of the waste — were troubling enough for being practically unenforceable. But they say abruptly ending the comment period is especially irksome — a bully tactic used to shut out meaningful public input.
“It’s like kids playing on the playground. It’s just not professional conduct,” said Maxine Lipeles, director of the Interdisciplinary Environmental Clinic at Washington University, who rushed to submit at least brief comments after being alerted of the changed deadline by Evans. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Those watchdog groups worry that the conduct is a reflection of the way the agency now does business under newly appointed administrator Scott Pruitt: respond to industry influence while showing blatant disregard for a fair and earnest public feedback process.
“We have a one-two punch,” Evans said. “First, we don’t get an enforceable rule, and the EPA cuts us out of the process guiding its formation.”
According to Evans, the EPA was originally prompted to reconsider coal ash regulations after a request from utility industry representatives.
The agency on Aug. 15 released a guidance document that outlined requirements for states aiming to deviate from federal coal ash rules with individually tailored state-by-state policies.
Public interest groups say the guidelines under consideration are unlawfully loose, providing a number of ways for states to weaken enforcement of coal ash regulation below federal standards.
“(The EPA) can’t change the regulations overnight, but they can approve weak state programs,” said Lipeles. “That’s what this guidance sets up criteria for.”
Comments submitted by Lipeles briefly summarize that the guidelines would allow states to cease groundwater monitoring near coal ash sites, set less protective groundwater standards, and exempt facilities from required clean-up.
“Those are major deviations and weakenings of the federal program,” Lipeles said. “But they didn’t give us a chance to make that point.”
Evans added that, historically, the EPA has put a clearly defined rule in place that states must abide by when developing their own programs to regulate certain pollutants. But she said that clarity was not provided this time.
“(The) EPA has refused to write a rule guiding the authorization process,” she said. “It’s always done through a process that’s governed by regulations. … It has never yet been done by guidance, which is an unenforceable set of guidelines.”
Critics say the timetable for the public to comment on the EPA’s guidance was tight to begin with.
The agency gave the public a deadline of Sept. 14 — just one month — to submit comments. But on Sept. 8, the agency told Evans that a 30-day extension had been granted — only to call six days later saying, without explanation, that the extension had been revoked.
Unsurprisingly, Lipeles says the comments rushed in before the deadline were unable to adequately address the substance of the policies at stake. The bulk of her two-page submission instead discusses how the agency is “denying the public basic procedural fairness,” before expressing broad concern with some of the guidelines.
The EPA did not respond to requests for comment.
Though higher-profile coal ash spills have occurred in states such as Tennessee and North Carolina, groups have raised concerns about contamination from the material in Missouri, where nearly 80 percent of the state’s energy comes from coal. In the St. Louis region, coal ash at Ameren’s power plants is often stored in ponds in floodplains. The ponds have traditionally been prone to leakage, and the area’s increased vulnerability to floods has raised alarm about them being overrun by adjacent rivers, even though they are protected by berms.
Ameren said it supports state-based, as opposed to federal, oversight of the material.
“We like the idea of state regulations,” said Rick Smith, Ameren’s director of environmental strategy and analysis. “A state program is preferable because it allows Missouri regulators to consider site-specific conditions ... and adjust regulatory seams appropriately, instead of a one-size-fits-all approach by the federal government.”
Ameren denied that the new guidelines under consideration would let states relax rules beneath federal requirements. The St. Louis-based power provider is a member of the Utilities Solid Waste Activities Group, a key industry organization engaged with the EPA on the potential shift in coal ash regulation. Regardless of the outcome, Smith said Ameren will proceed with plans to phase out its ash ponds and convert to dry ash handling systems.
The EPA has not indicated whether additional comments will be accepted in the process, going forward.
Even in lieu of public dialogue, Evans said legal hurdles may at least slow the Pruitt EPA’s perceived rush to loosen coal ash rules.
“As the Pruitt administration has seen, the Obama regulations are protected by the Administrative Procedure Act,” said Evans. “It has to have a rational basis for whatever steps they propose. ... The Pruitt EPA may have to proceed more slowly, but they may find discretion under the law to weaken the (coal ash) rule.”
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Pollution could increase as Illinois governor, EPA moves to rescue coal plants.
Gov. Bruce Rauner's administration is pushing to overhaul stringent limits on lung-damaging pollution from some of the last coal-fired power plants in Illinois.
Michael HawthorneContact Reporter
Chicago Tribune
In a move that could lead to dirtier air in Chicago and other downwind communities as far away as New York, Gov. Bruce Rauner's administration is pushing to overhaul stringent limits on lung-damaging pollution from some of the last coal-fired power plants in Illinois.
Proposed amendments to state rules would scrap limits on the rate of pollution from a fleet of eight coal plants in central and southern Illinois owned by Dynegy Inc. Instead, the state would impose annual caps on tons of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emitted by the fleet — a subtle but significant change that could stall or reverse efforts to reduce Dynegy's contributions to smog, soot and acid rain.
Drafted with extensive input from the company's Chicago-based attorneys, the proposed pollution caps are significantly higher than what Dynegy's fleet emitted during each of the past two years, according to a Tribune analysis of federal pollution data.
Alec Messina, director of the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, said the goal is to keep the financially struggling coal plants open by giving Houston-based Dynegy more flexibility to operate individual generating units, several of which are not equipped with modern pollution controls. Before joining the Rauner administration, Messina worked as a lobbyist for a trade group that represents the company's interests in Illinois.
State standards would still be tougher than federal requirements, Messina said, and company spokeswoman Meredith Moore noted emissions could still increase if the state's rate-based limits were kept in place.
But if a state rule-making panel approves the proposed changes, expected to be formally introduced this month, the new limit on sulfur dioxide would be nearly double what Dynegy's existing fleet emitted last year and higher than every year since 2012, according to the Tribune's analysis. The cap on nitrogen oxide emissions would be 79 percent higher than what came out of the smokestacks in 2016.
In an Aug. 25 letter to the state EPA, Attorney General Lisa Madigan's office questioned why the new regulations are necessary unless Dynegy plans to operate its dirtier coal plants more frequently and its cleaner plants less often.
The proposed pollution caps are set so high that the state would end up encouraging Dynegy to pollute more, Madigan's office said.
"We want to make sure the public is getting the full benefit of the pollution standards the company agreed to meet," James Gignac, Madigan's environmental counsel, said in an interview. Changing the standard now could roll back years of progress, he said.
Dynegy also secured a provision that would keep the pollution caps fixed at the same amounts — 55,000 tons of sulfur dioxide and 25,000 tons of nitrogen oxide annually — even if it decided to shut down individual generating units or scuttle entire plants.
An EPA draft would have automatically tightened limits on Dynegy's fleet to reflect plant closures, according to emails obtained by the nonprofit Environmental Law and Policy Center and shared with the Tribune. Chicago attorney Renee Cipriano, a former Illinois EPA director who represents Dynegy and other companies she once regulated, lined out or replaced language in the state's draft, the emails show.
"We are making those types of tweaks to the rule language, so hopefully they address your issues," Dana Vetterhoffer, an EPA attorney, responded in a May 31 email to Cipriano. "OK great," Cipriano wrote back four minutes later.
Howard Learner, the environmental group's president, said the changes would allow Dynegy to avoid installing pollution controls at its dirtiest plants and turn off the equipment at others.
"The company's strategy is to run these plants on the cheap for as long as possible, like an old Chevy beater," Learner said. "If the Rauner administration goes ahead with this, they're effectively passing on the health costs of Dynegy's pollution to the rest of Illinois and beyond."
Dynegy's Baldwin Energy Complex in Baldwin recently completed completed $1 billion in environmental upgrades, Monday, Dec. 10, 2012. B582558178Z.1 (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune) ....OUTSIDE TRIBUNE CO.- NO MAGS, NO SALES, NO INTERNET, NO TV, CHICAGO OUT, NO DIGITAL MANIPULATION... (E. Jason Wambsgans / Chicago Tribune)
Moore, the Dynegy spokeswoman, said in an email to the Tribune that swapping the state's current system for caps on the fleet's emissions "would mean real environmental benefits."
The EPA director echoed the company's comments. "For the first time there is a cap on this fleet. That's a big deal," said Messina, who took over the state agency last year after serving as a top aide in Rauner's office. He previously was a lobbyist for the Illinois Environmental Regulatory Group, an association that represents industries subject to state pollution regulations.
Dynegy doubled down on coal after emerging from bankruptcy five years ago. Like other coal-dependent energy companies, the firm has found it increasingly difficult to cash in on its bet as a surge of cleaner-burning natural gas and pollution-free wind power drove down the wholesale cost of electricity.
As a result, Dynegy has been trying to cut costs at power plants that are being priced out of energy markets.
During the past year the company has shuttered its Wood River plant near Alton, scrapped a unit at its Newton plant in Jasper County and announced plans to mothball two of the three units at its Baldwin plant in Randolph County. Baldwin and Wood River were equipped with pollution controls, and the company had started upgrading the Newton unit before abandoning the project.
Built in the 1950s, '60s and '70s, the Dynegy plants for years were exempt from the toughest provisions of the federal Clean Air Act. But laws and regulations became steadily tougher during the past two decades as scientists documented how pollution drifting from coal plants can trigger lung and heart disease and lead to early deaths far away from the smokestacks.
Burning coal to generate electricity also is contributing to climate change. Dynegy's Illinois plants emitted more than 32 million tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide last year, an amount equivalent to the tailpipe exhaust of 6 million cars.
Dynegy became the state's largest producer of coal-fired electricity in 2013 when it acquired five plants from St. Louis-based Ameren Corp. Both companies had earlier agreed to meet the state's rate-based pollution standards, which gradually became more stringent over the past decade and were designed to force power companies to clean up coal plants faster than federal regulations require.
Ensuring compliance was relatively easy at the three plants Dynegy owned before the Ameren deal. A federal legal settlement required the company to upgrade the Baldwin plant and the Havana plant in Mason County with equipment that significantly reduced emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury, a potent neurotoxin.
Under state regulations, the two coal plants and a third one in Putnam County are limited to an annual average of 0.19 pounds of sulfur dioxide per million BTUs (British Thermal Units) of energy generated. The limit for the five former Ameren plants is 0.23 pounds per million BTUs, also averaged across the entire fleet.
Both groups of coal plants met the targets last year. But the average rate of sulfur dioxide from the four cleanest plants was 0.05 pounds per million BTUs. The average rate from the rest: 0.43.
Improvements in pollution control are the main reason why the combined amount of sulfur dioxide emitted by the eight Illinois plants now owned and operated by Dynegy dropped 68 percent between 2010 and 2016. During the same period, the amount of electricity generated by the plants dropped by 26 percent.
"This rule change ... would give Dynegy free rein to run its dirtiest plants without meaningful limits, putting communities at risk, said Henry Henderson, Midwest director of the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council.
Just three years ago, Dynegy CEO Robert Flexon described attempts by competitors to delay environmental improvements as the "wrong behavior." "Either invest or retire," he told the Tribune at the time.
Since then electricity prices have stayed low, making it more difficult for the company to profit from some of its plants. And installing and operating pollution controls costs money.
None of the Dynegy plants burns Illinois coal; the company ships its fuel by train from Wyoming mines that produce coal with a lower sulfur content. But the company employs about 1,000 people in Illinois and the power plants contribute to the tax base of local communities, making their survival a potent campaign issue as Rauner seeks re-election next year.
The push to change state regulations for Dynegy emerged from discussions about a 2016 energy bill that subsidized Chicago-based Exelon, a competitor that had threatened to close money-losing nuclear plants in the Quad Cities and Clinton. Though Rauner and state lawmakers rejected Dynegy's bid for its own state subsidies, emails show Messina had been discussing other options with the company's top lobbyist since at least November.
Efficiency standards in the new law, combined with state requirements to boost generation of wind power and other forms of renewable energy, promise to further erode the once-dominant position of coal in Illinois.
Dynegy says the Exelon deal scrambled an already volatile market governed by complex electricity auctions, which set prices lower than the amount Dynegy needs to recoup the cost of operating its coal plants.
Environmental groups contend it isn't the EPA's job to assist Dynegy, pointing to a state law requiring the agency to improve air quality "to protect health, welfare, property and the quality of life."
"Now isn't the time to go backwards," said Brian Urbaszewski, director of environmental health for the Respiratory Health Association of Metropolitan Chicago. "The state shouldn't be putting profits ahead of public health and erasing all the gains we've made."
mhawthorne@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @scribeguy
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Wind farms in Ohio pit environmentalists against some neighbors tired of noise, view.
Wind farms are a big, and growing, business in Ohio.
PAYNE, Ohio — From the ground, the narrow aluminum ladder might as well extend to infinity. Actual height: 290 feet.
A Dispatch videographer straps on a protective harness, hard hat and safety glasses, joined by two employees of the farm’s operator, EDP Renewables. They are about to climb inside one of 55 wind turbines at Timber Road II wind farm in Paulding County.
The first steps are easy, even with 10 pounds of cameras and other gear.
Just resist the urge to look up, or down.
As the climbers ascend, their only rest is on three metal platforms, which are spaced out within the tower to break up the journey and catch any falling objects.
“The first thing that really hits you (is) the size in general, the gravity of just how much machinery goes into putting these things together,” said Jeremy Chenoweth, an EDP operations manager whose territory includes all of Ohio, and who made the climb.
Wind farms are a big, and growing, business in Ohio. They’re a part of the state’s clean-energy economy that has gone from near zero to more than $1 billion worth of spending in the past 10 years, with the potential to grow fourfold if every announced project is built.
But some neighbors view the turbines as an affront, spoiling the landscape with noise, the flicker of shadows from turbine blades and blinking red lights.
This is the gut-level underpinning of a Statehouse battle over rules on where turbines can be placed, a debate that will determine how much building will be allowed to occur.
On one side are the wind-energy industry, environmentalists and companies that want to increase the supply of clean power. On the other are some of the neighboring residents, along with a patchwork of conservative-leaning groups.
The state’s wind farms are all in northwestern Ohio, but regulators have approved others just outside of the Columbus metro area, with projects planned for Crawford, Champaign, Hardin and Logan counties, and still more in the pre-development stage.
So the debate about wind energy could be coming to your neighborhood, even if you live nowhere near northwestern Ohio.
Top of the world
Inside the wind tower, the climb takes about an hour, and the final steps are a strain. Muscles ache. Clothes are soaked with sweat.
But there is a reward. At the very top is a schoolbus-size room that holds a generator and control equipment.
On the ceiling is a clear plastic hatch that one of the EDP guys pops open.
Then, blue sky.
The three climbers step onto the roof for a gobsmacking view. The safety harness remains in place. It’s safe to stand.
Fort Wayne, Indiana, is visible, 22 miles to the west. And, if you stop to focus, you see the tiny rectangles of houses, on farms and along rural highways.
The turbine is turned off whenever somebody is working in it, so there is no electricity being generated. When active, the carbon-fiber blades slice through the air at speeds that can reach 185 mph at the tips. The top room and its contents weigh a crushing 70-plus tons, and send electricity down the tower through a series of high-voltage lines. The lines then go underground to connect with substations, and then meet up with interstate powerlines that feed into the country’s power grid.
Only from a distance, which is how most people see wind farms, does this giant machine look like a pinwheel.
Not many jobs
All 255 of the wind-farm turbines operating in Ohio have been built along a stretch of Paulding and Van Wert counties, where the land is flat and the winds are some of the most brisk. If you include turbines at homes and businesses, the statewide total is 302, according to the American Wind Energy Association, a trade group.
A typical turbine in northwest Ohio is 1.5 to 2 megawatts; the Timber Road II wind farm has a total 99 megawatts. For some perspective, a 2 megawatt turbine in moderate wind generates enough electricity in a year to provide for the needs off more than 500 houses, based on estimates cited by EDP.
When a wind farm is developed, there is a flurry of spending for parts and construction services. After that, the costs are minimal. The fuel — wind — is free, and the developer needs only a few people to do ongoing work.
One of those jobs belongs to Benjamin Werkowski, 28, local operations manager for EDP. He’s the first person up the ladder.
“I used to drive a dump truck, right out of high school, because I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” he said. “And then I was hauling stone and dirt at the first wind farm they put in Indiana, and it just sparked my interest, and I went from there.”
He lives in Van Wert, one of 23 full-time EDP workers who live in the area.
This small employment footprint means that there are no throngs of wind-industry workers to advocate for their business the way there would be for a power plant that runs on coal or nuclear and might employ hundreds of people. And, EDP’s headquarters is nowhere near, with a base in Spain and a main U.S. office in Houston.
EDP primarily interacts with its Ohio neighbors financially — lease payments to landowners, taxes to local governments, and charitable giving — and visibly, given the near-constant sight of the turbines.
This creates a dynamic that some people see as a conflict between the haves and have-nots, with some residents surrounded by turbines but receiving little or no money.
A constant presence
“It’s just very annoying, very unpleasant,” said Brenda DeLong, 61, interviewed on her front porch.
She lives on a lot that has been in her family for generations and was once part of her parents’ farm. Now, she has a view of Blue Creek Wind Farm, the state’s largest, along with parts of the Timber Road farms.
Near dusk on a Thursday, she begins to count the turbines. After a walk around the house, she is finished with 114, 115, 116.
“And that’s about all I see,” she said.
In other words, she can see nearly half of all the turbines on all of Ohio’s wind farms without leaving her 1-acre property.
She is a retired fourth-grade teacher and now spends most of her time volunteering for 4-H, the Red Cross and her church. She has three children and three grandchildren.
From her porch, she hears a near-constant sound, like a plane flying overhead, from the turbines. On some mornings and evenings, when the sun is behind the turbines, she sees a flicker of shadows on the walls of her house.
She feels like an essential part of her life — the outdoors around her home — has been taken away from her.
Rex McDowell, 69, a neighbor of DeLong’s, describes the area as the “Red Light District.” By way of explanation, he walks to the backyard, where each of the turbines has a red light that goes on for a moment, then off, and then on again. The lights act in unison. Together, they are bright enough to cast a red glow for miles.
The lights are there to help prevent collisions with aircraft and are required by federal aviation rules.
DeLong is part of a local group of opponents of wind energy, called Citizens for Clear Skies. One of the organizers is Jeremy Kitson, 41, who lives in a nearby township and is a high school teacher.
“I love how (wind-energy supporters) think we’re getting paid off by the Koch brothers,” Kitson said, referring to the politically active family behind the Kansas-based conglomerate Koch Industries. “Citizens for Clear Skies is just a lot of regular folks kicking in 25 bucks at a time.”
At state and local hearings dealing with wind energy, he is often in the audience and ready to speak, a familiar face for officials.
While he seems to relish the debate, DeLong is much more hesitant. But that hasn’t prevented her from making her views known. She even made a trip to Columbus in June to testify before an Ohio Senate panel about wind-energy regulations.
“Many who are pro-wind will never live near a turbine,” she told lawmakers.
Boost for schools
A few miles north and east of DeLong’s house is Wayne Trace High School, a rural school consolidated from three communities. Here, wind energy is a godsend, providing 11 percent of local tax revenue in the K-12 budget.
On a recent afternoon, one of the middle-school football teams practices on a field just west of the complex that houses the high school, middle school and district offices. The nearest wind farm is barely visible to the south.
“We just don’t have a lot of people seeking out the district for large industry,” said Ben Winans, the district’s superintendent. “The wind industry is one thing we can have.”
His district received $706,923 in taxes from wind turbines in the 2016-17 budget year. The wind money has allowed the district to increase staffing without raising taxes. The new hiring includes several reading specialists who work with students struggling to read at their grade level.
Winans grew up in the area and is an alumnus of the district he now runs. Though the wind turbines are barely visible from the school, he knows what it is like to be right next to them. His house, where he lives with his wife and children, has several turbines close enough to cast shadows on his walls.
He doesn’t mind.
“I’ve got one (turbine) on each end of my property,” he said. “I really don’t notice it anymore.”
Growing conflict?
Most wind-energy development has been in sparsely populated areas. But as demand grows, developers are moving closer to major cities.
The 255 active turbines in Ohio could be joined by 620 turbines at wind farms that regulators have approved, some of which are already under construction. In addition, there are at least a half-dozen other projects that are awaiting state approval, or are in a pre-application stage, based on filings and interviews with industry officials. The new wind farms represent more than $4 billion in spending.
With this pace of growth, researchers expect to see an increase in people who don’t like the turbines.
“It’s important to remember that this kind of opposition to any kind of infrastructure development is normal,” said Joseph Rand, a scholar who specializes in energy policy at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California.
He has taken a close look at how communities respond to renewable energy. Surveys show that a large majority of Americans support wind energy. At the same time, “people are inherently protective of place, of their landscape,” he said.
There are stereotypes at play. Wind supporters say the critics are uninformed or even delusional. Opponents say that wind supporters are motivated by money.
“Rarely do you see a nuanced perspective that has a fair story from both sides,” Rand said.
In his work, he hopes to determine the underlying motivations and find out how developers and communities can better respond.
State and local
One way to protect residents’ interests is through state and local regulations. Opponents of wind farms give the impression that the projects essentially receive a rubber stamp, with little consideration of the effects on residents and little skepticism of developers’ assertions. Also, local governments have a limited role in the process.
And yet, public records show an exhaustive and expensive review. For example, Blue Creek Wind Farm was approved by the Ohio Power Siting Board, with a multiyear review before the project went online in 2012. The board has broad authority on any utility-scale wind farm.
The board’s docket has 4,460 pages for Blue Creek, not counting two related cases, with extensive testing to estimate levels of noise, shadow flicker and other ramifications. The developer is a company that has since changed its name to Avangrid Renewables and has U.S. headquarters in Portland, Oregon.
According to filings, the developer projected that 39 houses would have shadow flicker of at least 30 hours per year. There is no legal standard for acceptable flicker, but 30 hours is often the guideline used by regulators.
Most of the residents of those houses have signed on to the project by either leasing property for the turbines, or by signing so-called “good neighbor” agreements.
With leases, property owners are signing a long-term contract to allow their land to be used to build a turbine and access roads. The payments vary, but are often in the range of $10,000 per turbine per year. The wind trade group says that annual lease payments in Ohio add up to more than $1 million, but less than $5 million.
Another type of contract is a neighbor agreement, which is for people who are near wind farms but have no turbines on their land. The residents are saying they will not object to the project in exchange for annual payments that are often in the $1,000 range. Winans’ family, for example, has such an agreement that pays $1,000 per year.
Avangrid gave special attention to the fewer than 10 households that did not sign any agreement and had more than 30 hours of flicker. In some cases, the company agreed to reduce the effects by shutting off certain turbines at certain times.
DeLong’s property is one of the majority that experience fewer than 30 hours. She does not recall any contact with the developer about flicker, noise or anything else.
“Nobody came to my door,” she said. It was an inauspicious start to what has been a bad relationship.
Paul Copleman, an Avangrid spokesman, had this response:
“This is a project that has roughly 250 participating landowners and that reflects a lot of effort to talk to a lot of people in the community, at kitchen tables and in living rooms and in public meetings,” he said. “We think the onus is on us to develop responsibly and talk to people about the benefits we feel the project delivers to everybody in the community.”
Ongoing fight
The competing interests collide in an ongoing debate about how much distance should be required between the turbines and nearby property lines.
In 2014, Ohio Senate Republican leaders expanded the required distance by making a last-minute amendment to an unrelated budget bill. The provision was largely in response to citizen concerns about wind farms.
Wind-industry advocates warned that the result would be a virtual halt in development. However, projects that already were approved could go forward using the old rules, which has accounted for nearly all construction since then.
Supporters of wind energy, a mix of Republicans and Democrats, have repeatedly tried and failed to pass rules that are more wind-friendly and warned that investment might soon shift to other states. The current proposal is Senate Bill 188, sponsored by Sen. Cliff Hite, R-Findlay, whose district includes most of the wind farms. The bill would allow construction of wind turbines within about 600 feet of property lines, which is down from about 1,300 feet under the 2013 amendment.
Hite is confident the bill can pass the Senate. His problem is in the House, where Majority Leader Bill Seitz, R-Cincinnati, is one of the most outspoken critics of wind energy.
“If wind farms cannot be developed without borrowing or stealing their neighbors’ nonresidential property in order to satisfy the setback, health and safety requirements, then perhaps they should not be developed at all,” Seitz said in a 2016 letter.
For DeLong and her friends, Hite has become the face of the pro-wind crowd. She notes that there is no wind farm near his home.
“If he lived near them, it would be different,” she said.
Hite had this response: “I would put one in my backyard if I could.”
People will disagree about whether that would be a pleasant view. Meanwhile, the opposite view, from the top of the turbine, is breathtaking.
Dispatch photographer and videographer Doral Chenoweth III contributed to this story.
dgearino@dispatch.com
@dangearino
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Pipeline 'man camps' loom over British Columbia's Highway of Tears.
A B.C. First Nation prepares for a possible influx of thousands of temporary energy industry workers over the next decade to try to prevent increased violence and crime.
Pipeline 'man camps' loom over B.C.'s Highway of Tears
By Brandi Morin in News, Energy, Politics | September 21st 2017
Drummers participate in the Nak'azdli Whut'en's All Nations Gathering between Aug. 4 and 6, 2017. Photo courtesy of the Nak'azdli Whut'en on Facebook
Nak'azdli Whut'en First Nation is nestled on the banks of Stuart Lake in north-central British Columbia, surrounded by rolling foothills and tall trees.
It is a relatively remote community, breathtaking in scenery and dependent on economic opportunities in forestry, mining, and pipeline development. It is a community bracing for major change.
Over the next decade, as many as 6,000 new energy industry workers could descend upon the region. The prospect of such a big influx of workers living in nearby “man camps” has aroused fears of increased violence and drug use.
The influx could more than double the population of about 4,500 in the Fort St. James area, which includes the municipality, rural communities and First Nations. Nak'azdli has just 1,972 members living both on and off reserves. The nearest city, Prince George, is 160 kilometres away.
To get ahead of the documented challenges that accompany an influx of temporary workers from outside the region, the Nak’azdli and Lake Babine First Nations are creating two full-time positions, funded by the B.C. government, to help them prepare.
Nak'azdli Band Councillor Ann Marie Sam says if several industrial project proposals go ahead as planned over the next decade, as many as six new work camps, housing up to 1,000 workers each, could be built within 60 to 100 kilometres of the community.
Among the proposed projects are TransCanada’s: the Coastal GasLink pipeline, the North Montney Mainline pipeline and the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission pipeline. The company is reviewing the Prince Rupert project, however, because Pacific NorthWest LNG announced in July that it would not proceed with a proposed liquefied natural gas export terminal near Port Edward, B.C. due to economy uncertainty.
The Nak’azdli band had also expressed opposition to Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, which would have run through its territory had it not been rejected by the federal government last year.
The danger of bringing in "man camps"
The “man camps” are precisely what their name implies: work camps housing mostly male employees working on resource development projects.
There were more than four men for every woman working in the forestry, fishing, mining, quarrying, and oil and gas industries in Canada in 2016, according to Statistics Canada.
The federal Liberal government is now reviewing Canada's conservation laws and is expected to tackle this issue. In June, it recommended changes to environmental assessments to require a gender-based analysis of an industrial project's impacts.
When the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission project was under review, community members expressed concern about two camps slated for construction in the traditional territory of the nearby Lake Babine First Nation. The Lake Babine and Nak’azdli nations found common cause, as Nak’azdli’s traditional territory hosts mining and forestry camps already.
The two nations commissioned a joint report, funded by B.C.’s Department of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation, with research by the consulting company Firelight Group. Statistics from the study, released in February 2017, indicate that industrial camps are associated with increased rates of sexual assault and violence against Indigenous women, along with addiction, sexually transmitted infections, and family violence.
“The potential for sexual assault, violence, disappearances, (sexually transmitted diseases), increases with the number of trucks on the road,” study author Ginger Gibson told National Observer. “There’s a whole whack of issues that don’t get considered until construction is happening and that’s too late.”
The final report recommends governments and agencies consider legislation, programs and services to address problems associated with industrial camps, and plan for integrated service delivery in advance of resource development projects. It also states a need for governments to allocate new financial and human resources to health, social services, and housing in the region.
Specific recommendations, from provision of addiction counseling to building recreational facilities, are designed to prevent problems and to address them when the do occur.
In an email, a spokesperson for TransCanada wrote that the company regularly engages with Indigenous communities and would continue to do so throughout the life of the proposed Pacific NorthWest LNG project. Although TransCanada says it attended an info session during the research phase of the industrial camp report, it wouldn’t provide further comment on the findings.
The B.C. government didn't respond to requests from National Observer for comment for this article.
A view of Stuart Lake in north central British Columbia. This area is home to the small Nak'azdli First Nation, which is bracing for challenges that can accompany an influx of energy workers. Photo courtesy of the Nak'azdli Whut'en First Nation
'Rigger culture' puts Indigenous women at risk?
The Firelight Group's research included discussions with local community members about the experience of Indigenous women living near construction camps.
“There’s a ‘rigger culture’ that exists, where a lot of people are working together in a hyper masculine context and they’re not really taking care of themselves — they might be drinking and doing drugs, and then they’re blowing off steam,” said Gibson.
“They’re not in their home community and they don’t think about the (local) people as their family or neighbours so they don’t treat people very kindly.”
Following the findings of the study, Nak’azdli leadership is looking at ways to prepare for the next influx of workers. Community members talk about preparing to welcome newcomers to their territory. Industry representatives talk about working with Indigenous groups to provide local cultural competency courses to their employees.
The Nak'azdli Health Centre is assembling rape kits to gather physical evidence after assaults.
Coun. Ann Marie Sam says planning for assaults is an unfortunate necessity.
“When we started developing rape crisis plans the first question for me was, ‘Why do we have to tell our women we can’t protect you and sexual assaults are going to happen? And when they do, we’re going to have a plan for you,'" she said in an interview. "I thought it was so unfair for our community to have to do that."
Community leaders worry that nearby women and children could be a target for workers who parachute into the area.
Sam recalled seeing an unfamiliar woman in town about a year ago when she was out walking with one of her daughters.
“I watched her, wondering who she was. One of the delivery trucks from the (Mount Milligan) mine was coming through town, driving fast, saw her, slams on the breaks, dust on the road and stops beside her. She gets in the truck and I don’t know whose daughter that was — if she was a mother, or whose sister that was. But that really struck me.”
Sam said she wondered if the driver solicited the young woman for sex. “Who do you report that to? I didn’t report it because I didn’t know who she was and I didn’t know what happened to her."
Among risks identified in the Firelight report are increased rates of sexually transmitted infections. The Nak’azdli Health Centre is launching an awareness campaign and promotes STI testing for both workers and community members.
“We want to welcome workers to our town but we also want to let them know that these are the rules of our town,” community health nurse Liza Sam, the councillor’s sister, told National Observer.
“They (workers) don’t have any ownership to our town, so we really want to keep our community intact with less disturbances,” she explained. “If the mine’s gonna be here or other industries, we want them to be the best they can be for community members.”
The proximity of Nak’azdli to the infamous Highway of Tears only adds to the community’s safety concerns.
Since the late 1960s, dozens of women and girls — most of whom are Indigenous — have gone missing or disappeared along Highway 16, an east-west highway spanning northern B.C. that eventually leads through Edmonton and Saskatoon before meeting the TransCanada Highway at Portage la Prairie, Man. The “Highway of Tears” takes in smaller roads in the vicinity too, explains Highway of Tears Walkers co-ordinator Brenda Wilson.
Women reach for an embrace during the Nak'azdli Whut'en's All Nations Gathering between Aug. 4 and 6, 2017. Photo courtesy of the Nak'azdli Whut'en on Facebook
Away from home with 'a lot of money'
Mia is a First Nations woman in Alberta. A former sex trade worker, she said camp workers and sex go hand-in-hand. She worked in Fort McMurray for 10 years during the oilsands boom and was on call "23 hours a day."
Mia's name has been changed to protect her identity.
“I think the guys are maybe lonely," she told National Observer. "They’re away from home, they have a lot of money — disposable income if you will.”
She came from what she describes as an abusive, broken home, and said adversarial circumstances led to the sex industry at age 17. She said she was encouraged to tell clients that she was Spanish or Italian, because Indigenous women were considered trash.
“The men became angry if they knew (you were Indigenous), and your value goes down significantly, so we didn’t reveal that.”
Mia described many dangerous encounters, including one with a client she said threatened to hang her in his apartment in Fort McMurray — a memory that haunts her. Employers know full well what’s going on, she added. But they don’t get involved.
“In that industry, nothing would surprise me. I can see people that may be running the camps turning a blind eye to this kind of thing.”
Mia said local women and girls in Alberta are recruited to the sex industry to service camp workers on a regular basis by pimps and escort agencies, and that locals in communities like Nak’azdli wouldn’t be passed by.
“We already know of cases where our young people have been recruited right off the reserve through the Internet. But if (a camp's) in their own backyards, I would be very concerned,” she explained. “It’s scary. I hope that the communities are looking at ways of preventing and also educating on exploitation.”
Industry challenges
The Mount Milligan ore mine has been operating on Nak’azdli territory for the past four years. It’s roughly 60 kilometres from the Nak’azdli town site and has around 300 men working there at any given time.
A representative from Mount Milligan said the work camp mostly hires locally, so they go home every night.
“We do have a camp, but it’s not a big camp,” said company spokeswoman Joanna Miller. “Compared to a construction camp, they bring in a transient group of people — that’s not the case that happens at Milligan. Seventy per cent of (the miners) live in our local communities. For those who don’t live within a regional community the transportation is by bus.”
Mount Milligan works with local Indigenous groups to strengthen relationships by providing cultural competency courses to workers and teaching them local First Nation history. Miller sits on the community sustainability committee, which brings together representatives of nearby municipalities, regional districts, First Nations, educational institutions and economic development organizations.
“We work with the community to deal with concerns regarding social effects. Since I’ve been on that committee we have not had a single issue come forward. I have not had a conversation with an emergency personnel or RCMP in an instance where the mine has been a factor,” she said.
Mount Milligan’s practices align with the co-operation recommended in the Firelight Group report authored by Gibson.
“Everybody has to work jointly to take care of this issue,” Gibson said. “Siting is a big thing — where (communities) can control how often and who can get into your community. Making (workers) immobile at the camps so they’re not able to get into their trucks and be out looking for sexual services, makes a difference.
An undated photo of the Mount Milligan mine site in northern British Columbia. Photo courtesy of Centerra Gold
'Don't let it happen'
Tribes south of the border are familiar with the side effects of industry booms and influxes of workers living in "man camps."
Since the North Dakota Bakken oil boom began in 2008, reports of violence against Indigenous women have increased in the vicinity of the Fort Berthold Reservation, which is home to the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nations.
In 2013, North Dakota’s Uniform Crime Report showed an annual increase of 7.2 per cent in the total number of reported violent index crimes such as murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults. The report showed an increase of 17 per cent in rapes alone to 243 reported in 2012.
In response to those findings, Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem told the Bismarck Tribune in 2013 that 12 of the state’s top oil-producing counties accounted for much of that crime. He also said that the North Dakota legislature increased funding for state law enforcement agencies to put more officers in the field.
Kandi Mossett, 38, has seen the effects of man camps first hand. She is with the Indigenous Environmental Network from North Dakota and is from New Town in the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, where more than 1,500 oil wells sprouted when the boom came.
“We definitely didn’t know about the man camps and how that was going to play out,” she told National Observer. “It was something that took over and shocked the community as far as how quickly the violence escalated and how it’s continued to cause problems in our community in this past decade.
“It’s a totally different place to live. It’s gross, the men are everywhere looking at women like they’re meat. We never used to have to lock our doors... but now people are scared for their safety. You make sure you have mace with you when you walk home at night.”
Her advice for the Nak’azdli and Babine First Nations as they deal with the prospect of more industrial camps is: “don’t let it happen.”
Since camps will be built if projects go ahead, she encourages the communities to get their police force involved and on site to monitor them.
The RCMP declined an interview request, but said in an email statement that the police force works with the Province of B.C. before industrial projects are approved to conduct socio-economic impact studies in First Nations and other communities.
Ultimately, industrial development is not something that Nak’azdli wants to abolish. They just want to make sure it will be safe when it comes.
Activist Kandi Mossett waits to smudge during Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access pipeline in North Dakota. Photo provided by Kandi Mossett
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Dept of Energy Solar Decathlon
From oil refineries to solar plants, unions bend California climate change policies in their favor.
At a time when the state is trying to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, union efforts to protect or create jobs threatens to conflict with goals to combat global warming.
No contour of California’s vast landscape inspires such passionate devotion as its coastline, so state lawmakers recoiled when President Trump announced in April that he wanted to expand offshore drilling. The outrage was channeled into a proposal for preventing any new infrastructure along the water, pipelines or otherwise, for additional oil production.
But the day before a key Sacramento committee hearing this summer, Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara) received some bad news about her legislation — it was opposed by a politically powerful labor group whose members’ paychecks depend on the steady flow of oil.
In a letter to lawmakers, the top lobbyist for the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California said he feared harming projects that “maintain and create new employment opportunities.” The legislation, Senate Bill 188, stalled the following day, an unceremonious defeat for a proposal announced with much fanfare months earlier.
“I was startled,” said Jackson, who represents a region with a painful history of oil spills but said she recognizes the jobs that fossil fuels provide. “I don’t think people say, ‘I love oil so much.’ It’s, ‘I have to feed my family.’”
The episode was a reminder of how an array of California unions, despite their vocal support for fighting climate change and their willingness to embrace green issues scorned by national labor groups, either bent or blocked environmental proposals during the legislative session that ended last week. At a time when the state is trying to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, their effort to protect or create jobs threatens to conflict with goals to combat global warming.
Unions torpedoed an ambitious proposal to phase out fossil fuels for generating electricity after lawmakers refused to insert a provision limiting clean energy projects that don’t hire their workers. Another group pushed for changes that could stop the state from awarding electric car rebates to automakers involved in labor disputes.
Perhaps most notably, the building trades reinforced oil industry opposition to an early version of cap-and-trade legislation shortly after they forged a new statewide labor agreement with Chevron, which operates two of California’s most productive refineries. The cap-and-trade program, which requires companies to buy permits to release greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, was eventually extended by lawmakers in July, but on terms more favorable to oil companies.
Although the fossil fuel industry is the most obvious adversary of climate change policies, labor resistance can be an especially potent factor in a state dominated by Democrats who rely on political support from carpenters, electricians, pipe fitters and other blue-collar workers.
“I don’t think it’s a secret the influence they have,” said Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia (D-Bell Gardens), who authored the cap-and-trade legislation defeated with labor’s help.
The situation has frustrated environmentalists, another crucial Democratic constituency that often works with labor to advance green goals. The two factions have previously built alliances around landmark climate policies, such as a renewable energy mandate that protects union jobs with incentives for building new solar and wind plants in California. The building trades also support cap and trade because the sale of emission permits finances mass transit projects, including the bullet train from Los Angeles to San Francisco.
“We’re like cousins who occasionally go off in different directions, but sit down at Thanksgiving together,” said Kathryn Phillips, a Sierra Club lobbyist.
When schisms develop between environmentalists and unions, they reflect an anxiety over finding dependable jobs during a shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
“We believe that green energy is the way the world is going,” said Robbie Hunter, president of the state building trades group.
At the same time, he wants to protect the dwindling number of blue-collar jobs left in California, rattling off a list of industries — aerospace, steel, cars — that have fled the state over the years. Too many regulations have occasionally been a problem, Hunter said, and defending facilities like oil refineries is “no different than a miner showing up trying to save his mine.”
The pressure to curtail fossil fuels has been a source of tension among progressives around the country. Last year, national trade unions harshly criticized an alliance with Tom Steyer, a billionaire donor and environmentalist from San Francisco, after he opposed building the Keystone XL Pipeline, a project expected to create jobs.
Trump has directly appealed to that kind of divide, recently standing before a North Dakota oil refinery and promising to “unlock the extraordinary potential of our great American workers.”
“We're getting rid of one job-killing regulation after another,” he said.
Kim Glas, executive director of the Blue Green Alliance, a national partnership of unions and environmentalists, said pitting workers against fighting global warming represents a false choice. The goal, she said, is creating “an economy and a climate policy that’s more fair and equitable.”
In California, oil companies are also vying for labor’s loyalty and the clout that comes with it. During an industry conference in Kern County two years ago, a member of the audience asked a California Resources Corp. executive why the Los Angeles-based oil and gas company had signed a union agreement.
“We’re using the trades, mainly for their quality, and for the political power they bring with them,” said the executive, Robert Barnes.
This year the oil industry benefited from that political power when the building trades lobbied against Garcia’s Assembly Bill 378, which would have reshaped California’s cap-and-trade program to include more stringent regulations. A broad cross section of environmental advocates supported the proposal, but it fell short in the Assembly.
“Once labor came out against it, it killed my bill,” Garcia said.
The June vote came shortly after the building trades finished negotiating an expansive labor deal with Chevron. Initial drafts were exchanged two years ago and the agreement was finalized in May, ensuring 5 million hours of work annually for five years.
“It’s game-changing,” said Bill Whitney, who leads the building trades affiliate in Contra Costa County, home to Chevron’s Richmond refinery. “I don’t think there’s anything to come along like this in decades.”
There may not be a need for fossil fuels in the distant future, Whitney said, but until then there’s no reason to “eviscerate the goose that lays the golden egg” for middle-class workers.
Hunter said the statewide agreement with Chevron was the logical result of state law requiring refineries to hire more workers who graduate from apprenticeship programs, which “gives us a common cause” with the oil industry.
A spokesman for Chevron, Braden Reddall, said the agreement will "help further guarantee access to a qualified labor force” for the company’s refineries.
The enduring value of oil jobs is a challenge for environmentalists.
“Some of these industries that are emissions intensive are also the industries where the worker protections are strongest and the wages and compensation has been the best,” said Betony Jones, director of the Green Economy Program at the UC Berkeley Labor Center.
Labor influence over climate policies occasionally made Democrats uncomfortable last week. One late addition to state budget legislation, Assembly Bill 134, directs regulators to develop a process for determining whether automakers are “fair and responsible” in their treatment of workers.
If lawmakers approve the process next year and companies fall short of that standard, their electric cars could become ineligible for California rebates that are crucial to making zero-emission vehicles more cost competitive. Tesla, the state’s only automaker, has resisted efforts to unionize the workforce at its Fremont factory.
The provision was supported by the California Labor Federation, a coalition that includes the United Auto Workers, as a way to ensure public money doesn’t flow to companies that mistreat employees. But these kinds of rules could end up “undermining our own goals” of fighting climate change with more electric cars, said Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco).
Another example of union influence came during the debate over Senate Bill 100, which would have required the state to stop using fossil fuels for generating electricity by 2045. The proposal was announced in May and appeared to be cruising through the Legislature until support within the labor community fractured.
Although the building trades, eager for jobs building new solar plants, remained supportive, unions representing electrical and utility workers announced their opposition the week before lawmakers adjourned for the year.
The unions wanted lawmakers’ help curbing the role of so-called distributed resources, such as rooftop solar panels and batteries for storing energy, that are owned and operated by private companies instead of utilities. Environmentalists view the initiatives as key tools for reducing emissions, but the unions called them a dangerous example of electricity grid deregulation that also threatens their jobs.
“We have a parochial self-interest in this,” said Tom Dalzell, business manager for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1245.
The legislation stalled in the Assembly, a defeat for the author, Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles). He plans to push the proposal next year and acknowledged more work will be needed to ensure environmentalists and unions are on the same page.
“It’s going to be really important in the immediate future that we bridge the gap between labor and clean energy,” he said.
chris.megerian@latimes.com
Twitter: @chrismegerian
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