A hostile crowd and bemused Fort Bragg City Council greeted the Pacific Gas and Electric Company, whose two spokesmen arrived at Monday night”s regular meeting without any new details about their wave energy plans.
Those details were to be released by the end of the week, Project Manager Bill Toman told the council.
“We are not getting any substantive information from PG&E. I don”t understand why this is on our agenda if we are not going to be given information worthy of it being placed on this agenda,” said Councilman Dan Gjerde.
“I don”t want to see wave energy on the City Council agenda ever again until PG&E provides us with adequate information in a timely fashion for the city to [respond to],” said Gjerde.
Mayor Doug Hammerstrom arrived at the meeting hoping for a dialogue with PG&E but said there wasn”t enough information for that to happen.
“I hope the information gets better,” Hammerstrom said.
John Innes, who is a member of the non-profit group FISH (Fishermen Interested in Safe Hydrokinetics), explored what PG&E came to tell the council Monday night.
“We find out that the presentation is being made to you tonight without detail … to the county supervisors with no detail and then, hearing Bill talk, a presentation to the public also without detail. The net result is they are going to give us the details at the end of the week, after holding three meetings, which I thought were scheduled to tell us what the detail was going to be,” said Innes.
Background
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, recently granted PG&E an exclusive three-year preliminary permit to study wave energy in a 19-mile long area off Fort Bragg. The project, along with a similar proposal off Eureka, compose WaveConnect, which PG&E has sold as a competition between emerging wave energy technologies.
FERC wants industry to develop wave energy, not local communities. The independent federal agency last week denied Sonoma County efforts to secure a preliminary permit in its own waters, also denying a permit to Lincoln County, Ore.
Private companies have had extensive discussions with FERC, and in some cases with each other, before surprising local communities all over the nation with the permit applications. Once granted, a preliminary permit gives the applicant automatic preference for a FERC license. Nobody else can study wave energy in the same area once a permit has been granted.
PG&E has fought the public ratepayer advocate before the Public Utilities Commission to keep research findings secret, while seeking to fully fund the study with public money and not use the moneys of PG&E shareholders.
The apparent secrecy and FERC”s denial of legal status to the county and city locally is proof to some community members that a conspiracy is under way to develop oil, not waves, offshore.
Monday night
“The ocean gold rush is on and it”s clouded in secrecy,” said community member Char Flum.
Toman told the crowd that the California State Lands Commission promised to take any local input to FERC. Most importantly, he said PG&E would comply with a full California Environmental Quality Act process led by the State Lands Commission. That extensive process by itself often takes years.
The matter was only on the council agenda for information, not action. Hammerstrom encouraged people to speak instead at the Tuesday night meeting on the same topic.
Yet hostility and misinformation reigned on Monday.
Police helped encourage David Gurney, a commercial fisherman angry about FERC”s lack of a local process, to leave the podium. Gurney was determined to complete reading his prepared speech. Hammerstrom insisted that Gurney yield to the next speaker. Gurney said he would have to be dragged from the lectern. Tensions, already high, erupted and the mayor ordered a break.
Flum said the city faced potential lawsuits if it allowed wave energy development.
Toman said misconceptions have been distorting the discussion. Indeed, much of the hostility of speakers came from the lack of a public information and participation process.
Innes suggested a process whereby local groups and agencies would participate in the hiring of consultants and be privy to their reports. That way, the study consultants would have loyalties beyond the giant utility.
A simple permit application process with the city would have made the issue more intelligible for Gjerde. He demanded to know when PG&E will start to pay for the city staff time the issue has created.
Toman admitted that on land, that would be the process. He said funding for the city would be at the top of the utilities” wish list when they get the $6 million they are expecting for WaveConnect from the California Public Utilities Commission.
“I don”t want the city to spend critical staff time on this until PG&E starts paying for our staff time. That doesn”t mean that the city will be backing it,” Gjerde said.
“Any developer has the right to propose a good project or a bad project … If the information comes in and it”s a bad project, I have no qualms about voting against it,” said Gjerde, citing his track record on being targeted by developers who have disliked his votes.
Gjerde said PG&E has paid the city lip service while providing no real role or even information.
“You started out with a City Council that endorsed the concept … What you have done is you have blown it. You have gone directly to FERC and avoided us, at least in any substantive way. You have undermined your support in this community and on this council,” Gjerde said.
“If I were PG&E, I would let you guys go,” Gjerde told Toman and spokesman Ian Caliendo.
(A full report on PG&E meeting on Tuesday at Fort Bragg Town Hall will be in next week”s newspaper.)
