Listics

In response to citizen requests for an independent study to assess the need for American Transmission Company to build $4 billion worth of new transmission lines, Governor Jim Doyle appointed ATC’s own attorney as PSC commissioner…

… the angst-ridden video above presents local activist voices, from power industry experts to earnest lefties and paranoid flakes. The faces are recognizable, but the words are incoherent. The testimony is largely drawn from a public hearing regarding a short line that threatens property values in an up-scale, white neighborhood northwest of Madison. The human energy for re-evaluating power needs on a regional basis and coming up with an integrated plan that incorporates future technology is grounded, siphoned off by debates on sub-projects where all opposition can be lumped by ATC as NIMBYism. All the earnest people of goodwill who are joined together to advocate for public participation in a regional planning process are drawn into the bureaucratic minutiae of the utility industry dominated “Public Service Commission.” Meanwhile, for many of the organizers, success or failure is less interesting than the organizing itself. Indeed defeat may forge stronger bonds of alienation than a balanced victory that achieves broad consensus across the rural, suburban, and urban communities whose power needs are under discussion.

There is a middle way here, a way that brings electrical power to those who need it, that doesn’t threaten reasonable margins for public utilities, and that preserves the people, the neighborhoods and the land from the intrusion of 1930s industrial scale power distribution systems. There is a middle way that addresses the needs of the future for carbon sequestration and alternative generation methods.

American Transmission Company and the Public Service Commission are engaged in a zero sum game against the public and the public interest. Until that is acknowledged and the competitive context has shifted to cooperation, there is little hope that a meaningful solution will emerge. The people organized to oppose the ATC and the PSC likewise bear a responsibility to get out of the zero sum game and find a way to achieve consensus. Unfortunately, that probably means ignoring some of the loudest voices on their side.