A retired commercial fisherman surprised the audience at Pacific Gas and Electric”s Fort Bragg Town Hall forum on April 15 by supporting the concept of wave energy.
While this wouldn”t be big news elsewhere, it marked the first time a proponent has spoken at a public forum in favor of PG&E, much less in outspoken fashion.
Although industry proponents have called PG&E”s WaveConnect one of the most important tests of the new technology in the nation, local reaction has been overwhelmingly negative, mostly because of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission”s lack of a public process and because lots has gone on behind the scenes, without even local governments aware.
PG&E filed documents Friday, April 25, updating FERC on the progress the utility has made on its exclusive preliminary permit issued in March to study wave energy in 68 square miles off Fort Bragg for three years. Friday”s filing by PG&E was a boilerplate document, saying only it met with locals, without reporting anything suggested locally.
One thing new is that PG&E will study all three licensing processes recently offered by FERC. Two new licenses, the conditional and pilot, offer shorter terms for power production than conventional hydro licenses, which can run 30 to 50 years.
Voice of support
Alan Stein, who once led a salmon restoration effort in Alaska, identified himself as a lifelong environmentalist as well as fisherman, before supporting wave energy study and calling criticism “absurd.”
“I hope you are also aware there is no fishing season, no sports fishing season either, which means unemployment. I hope one of the factors you consider is the ability of this project to create jobs for welders, painters and others. People with boats could provide services. Many high paying jobs could be created by this project. I would ask you to put that in your stew,” Stein said.
At this point the crowd was silent, as Stein said he would oppose anything which would actually injure the ocean and noted the high price of gasoline.
“I have heard nothing but pure unfounded speculation about damage to the ocean,” Stein said.
He said he had observed whales dodge fishing nets in Alaska.
“[Humpback] whales have superb sonar systems, so do gray whales,” Stein said.
He said he had removed crab pots from the tails of whales and said those opposed to wave energy arrays should thus also oppose crabbing.
“I think this is a red herring. I don”t think whales are going to be impacted at all by this project.”
David Gurney later retorted fellow fisherman Stein”s claim that wave energy devices wouldn”t impact whales. He asked Stein how he could know that whales dodged the nets when the animals do not surface when stressed.
“I”d like to know how you saw that underwater,” Gurney said.
Stein also ridiculed the notion that an oil tanker could strike a wave array, pointing out they travel in shipping lanes 15 miles offshore, while wave arrays will be no more than four miles offshore.
He conceded that commercial trollers would not be able to work around the wave arrays, which he said would create a protected area for fish that would benefit fishing in the long run.
Stein then attacked the idea that wave arrays could damage freshly hatched fish by sucking them into the buoys.
“The buoys would use a few gallons an hour … far less than running a sports boat out into the ocean, picking up the water all the way,” Stein said.
Stein continued to hit the criticisms of others as “absurd,” taking on the notion that wave energy arrays will cause injury to the viewscape, in the way that oil rigs uglify much of offshore Southern California. Stein”s harsh tone was similar to many of the attacks that had been launched on the two representatives of host PG&E, Project Manager Bill Toman and spokesman Ian Caliendo.
Toman entered into the debate about ships hitting wave buoys, saying each would come with GPS navigation and lights.
Stein pointed out how small the harbor marker buoy looks from Noyo Bridge, saying the power array would likely be much farther offshore.
“They will appear about the size of my arm,” he said raising his arm. This is a totally absurd objection.”
Stein got heckled at this point.
“Could you have respect for me,” he said.
“Can you stop using the word absurd,” a woman in the crowd answered.
“Could you just be quiet and listen to me,” Stein countered.
At one point, a woman asked Stein to remove his dark sunglasses. He replied by saying he couldn”t see without the glasses.
Although Stein, of Caspar, is a relative newcomer on the local scene, one well-known local environmental leader took on the crowd for its heavy-handed negativity.
“I am really concerned with the antagonism in this room, this spirit of hate, toward these two men who have come to our community [Toman and Caliendo],” Susan Lightfoot said.
“I”m asking, pleading, for our community to move forward in a spirit of cooperation and love,” she said.
Lightfoot is a founder of the Noyo Food Forest and has been involved in localization and efforts to produce clean, organic food. Lightfoot praised many of the older community members who helped defeat efforts to drill for oil offshore but said questions about jobs were valid.
“I”m leaving this room feeling very heavy tonight,” she said.
Several locals have approached this reporter and said they favor wave study, if not the highly flawed FERC process, but didn”t want to give their names because of the passion opponents have shown.
Resident Anna Lucas told the crowd passion can be good but also dangerous.
“We are emerging from a regime that openly suppressed science, let”s keep our passions suppressed enough to wait for the science,” Lucas said.
“We don”t know whether PG&E is a good guy in this, or a bad guy, it”s dangerous to assume either,” she said.
“I”m suggesting we have a prenuptial agreement; let”s not rush into a marriage, let”s keep our eyes open. Are they really going to include local people?”
On a prime occasion to ask PG&E meaningful questions, new questions weren”t asked. More than one speaker simply launched a diatribe, others demonstrated they haven”t paid attention to information released by the utility or reports in this newspaper.
One woman claimed nothing had been written in the newspaper about wave energy, when the process has been covered for over a year on a regular basis.
“Let”s be savvy, intelligent people. We have to ask these questions with dignity and respect,” said Lightfoot. “Let”s not just say no. No is an easy out, an easy way to go. Solutions are much more difficult.”
New information,
or lack of
One substantive question that was given a preliminary answer was how many buoys might be placed and in how big of an area. Toman said the current technology provides 1 megawatt or less per buoy, meaning a minimum of 40 devices spread over 10 to 20 acres.
Toman first asserted both that the buoys would not be visible from shore “many miles.” But when challenged by the crowd, who pointed out the permit starts a quarter-mile from shore, Toman said no site had been picked but that nearshore sites would likely be knocked from consideration by the community input.
Another point that Toman was able to give new information on was the criticism of PG&E for not owning its own green energy plants. Toman said he is part of a brand new division at the utility that is tasked with getting the company back into the business of owning new power plants.
Many of the speakers were polite even when pointing out the historic track record of PG&E. One man suggested that Toman and Caliendo get a raise for being the ones willing to brave the Mendocino Coast. That same subtle critic said if what Stein said was true about buoys not posing a risk to ships, the word “shipwreck” should be stricken from the dictionary.
A key reason why wave energy has so irked local people is FERC”s lack of an intelligible local input process into a still emerging issue. FERC is inspired by the neo-conservative idea of turning the public process over to business, making few demands on industry and counting on corporations to both create the innovations and the process that government once regulated.
But PG&E has created its own controversy, mostly by being stingy with information and by taking a public posture that sometimes conflicts with what the company is saying in its filings with the California Public Utilities Commission.
The lack of information from PG&E irritated several members of the Fort Bragg City Council on the previous Monday. Speakers at the Tuesday forum spent time describing PG&E”s past failures, such as building nuclear power plants on earthquake faults and even the film “Erin Brockovich,” which turned PG&E malfeasance into a movie starring Julia Roberts.
Norm De Vall, Fifth District county supervisor from 1979 to 1995, described his experiences with PG&E, telling how the utility maintains an easement to deliver power from the Point Arena Coast to the inland grid on the other side of the Coast Range.
“This is the same company that can”t keep the lights on in the winter around here, same company that charges this area the highest service rates of anywhere that they service,” De Vall said.
De Vall wasn”t all criticism. He thanked PG&E for extensive help with undergrounding wires in remote areas. At one point he corrected Toman, who said Mendocino County imported all its power, overlooking an inland power plant.
“Everybody here is going to watch you because we have had so much experience with PG&E,” De Vall said.
Toman said PG&E does not own any oil and gas wells and this project has “nothing whatsoever to do with oil and gas.”
The utility could also commit in writing not to gather or sell information related to hydrocarbons, but has not done so yet.
Toman said there had been misunderstandings locally, especially about the intent of the utility to put devices into the water immediately.
“There is a feeling we are going to go out and put buoys just next week. We are only allowed to do environmental studies; we may have to have a couple of boats out. We will have consultants to answer the questions a multitude of regulatory agencies will have.”
One thing that has changed since PG&E arrived in town is the intent to do testing in the water. The first spokesman the utility sent described an exciting competition between technologies in the ocean. That is what the preliminary permit describes, a test of up to 5 megawatts of power generation in the ocean during the first three years, at which point the utility would decide to seek a license for a 40-megawatt commercial plant.
But Toman told KZYX&Z radio this week that there will be no such testing in the water during the three-year period, instead doing tests in tanks at Oregon State University.
That changes the whole notion of WaveConnect from an invention competition in the water involving up to three different technologies to a university setting — which could have been done without any permit.
In fact, many of the questions have yet to be asked, much less answered.
“This project is not like any other project. It is somewhat unprecedented. There are a lot of things that simply aren”t known at this point,” Caliendo said.
