David Michael Miller
What does it take to get Howard Marklein and Jon Erpenbach on the same page?
Marklein, the Republican state senator from District 17, is “focused on rural Wisconsin” and endorsed by the NRA and Wisconsin Right to Life. During last December’s lame duck melee, his voicemail box was clogged with messages urging him to vote no on Republican attempts to handcuff incoming Gov. Tony Evers. He later explained his yes votes by telling constituents they were being “misled”: he didn’t vote to stymie the Democrats, he voted to rein in government.
Sen. Erpenbach (D-Middleton) is a former radio personality with perfect ratings from the Sierra Club and the Wisconsin AFL-CIO. He was one of the Wisconsin 14 who in 2011 fled to Illinois to prevent a vote on Gov. Scott Walker’s union-busting Act 10.
Despite their differences, last month Marklein and Erpenbach put their signatures on the same letter, joining forces with three Assembly representatives — Democrat Sondy Pope, author of the letter, and Republicans Travis Tranel and Todd Novak — to weigh in on the Cardinal-Hickory Creek power line. This project, proposed by the American Transmission Company (ATC), would stretch a line of 17-story rust-brown steel towers across the Mississippi and over at least 100 miles of the scenic Driftless Area. Critics of the plan say it’s not needed — the energy market has changed dramatically since the project was hatched back in 2011 — and that its real reason for being is to wring from ratepayers a guaranteed return of 10.2 percent on a cost of about $500 million.
Since its formation in 2001, ATC has built several of these huge 345-kilovolt lines in Wisconsin. In their letter, the legislators urged the Public Service Commission to provide what opponents of the lines have been seeking for years: some indication of “whether or not Wisconsin ratepayers are getting the returns estimated during the planning stages” of these projects. ATC always promises vague “economic benefits” but has never shown the dollars-and-cents effect on a typical customer’s electric bill.
The letter, along with another written recently by U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, is giving hope to opponents of the lines that this time will be different. “I have been at this since I was elected 17 years ago,” says Pope. “This is the first time that I honestly thought the ratepayers and the public had an opportunity to halt the project. Up until now I have always known that no matter what we did, the line was going through, ATC was going to do what it wanted to do, and they had no intention of responding to the voice of the people. Now I think they have run into something completely different. The opponents are well-informed, they are passionate, they are motivated, they are on this thing constantly, and I’m not so sure that they are going to fail this time.
“It’s more than a ray of hope,” she adds. “I see real hope here.”
Howard Learner is also hopeful. The executive director of the Environmental Law & Policy Center, which represents the Driftless Area Land Conservancy and the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation in the case, notes an “unprecedented amount of citizen opposition,” including a long list of people who have applied to be “intervenors” in the proceeding, able to call witnesses, submit testimony, and participate as parties in the formal and sometimes byzantine approval process. In past transmission cases, most citizens have been content to contribute public comments to the case file. In the last major power-line case decided by the PSC, for the Badger Coulee line approved in 2015, six individuals or couples requested intervenor status; in this case there are 27, not counting 10 Amish farmers who have grouped together as one. Two county boards and six towns and villages are also participating as intervenors.
The case is now in the discovery phase, as parties submit written information and ask each other questions. Public hearings will be held in June; the commission must decide the issue by Sept. 30.
Another reason opponents are hopeful is the climate change in Madison. When ATC filed for approval last April, the Public Service Commission consisted of three Walker appointees. Since then, Evers appointed a new chairperson, Rebecca Cameron Valcq. Though she worked for many years as an attorney for We Energies, opponents of ATC are encouraged by her public statements so far. And Evers may soon get another appointment. In December, Walker reappointed Ellen Nowak, who had served six years on the commission, but she’s been prevented from returning since Dane County Circuit Judge Richard Niess threw out the lame duck appointments. An appeal is scheduled to go to the state Supreme Court next month.
Evers’ influence goes beyond the PSC. The governor is trying to put Wisconsin on track to have 100 percent renewable energy by 2050. That goal could provide an argument in favor of the new line — one of its purported objectives being to bring wind power from the west — but opponents of the project are heartened by another Evers pronouncement, his expressed desire to increase funding for the state’s Focus on Energy conservation program, an important part of the energy future they envision.
While demand for electricity has been flat or negative for years, Learner says, huge strides are now being made in solar and battery technology. For example, just this month the PSC approved 450 megawatts of new solar generation that was not anticipated when the Cardinal-Hickory Creek project was planned. “We’re at an inflection point in the electricity system,” Learner says, “much as the telecommunications system transformed from landline phones with wires and poles to cell phones with Wi-Fi and other services. ATC’s proposal would lead to $2 to $3 billion in charges to consumers in Wisconsin and the Midwest over the next 40 years, and would lock in yesterday’s electricity system while the world is changing very fast toward a cleaner energy future.”
Tom Content, executive director of the Citizens Utility Board, says that part of the problem is a regulatory regime that is stuck in the late 1990s, when Wisconsin lawmakers responded to a series of power outages by streamlining the approval process for new construction. In effect, the state ceded planning to the utility companies and left the PSC to conduct energy policy one proposal at a time, with no initiative, coordination, or big-picture thinking.
As a result, “We’ve built more than we needed,” Content says. Since electric customers pay for what the utility companies build, plus a guaranteed profit on top, “we went as a state from having the lowest rates in the Midwest to the second highest rates in the Midwest, on average. We think that a broader look, some kind of integrated resource plan, would be in the best interests of customers.”
ATC spokesperson Kaya Freiman says the company is trying to fulfill its responsibility to provide a safe and reliable grid. The project will pay for itself, she says, and provide $22 million to $349 million in economic benefits. “We have and will continue to work with state and federal regulators to gain approval for a project that will help improve electric reliability, access to lower-cost power, and access to renewable energy.”
ATC has never lost a case like this. Though opponents of the new line are better organized than ever, and receiving an unprecedented amount of attention and support, they know from experience that only three opinions really count — those of the three commissioners, who will vote at the end of a long, opaque process that can easily be overwhelmed by money, clout, and legal-technical mumbo-jumbo. Just last week ATC again refused to provide the kind of consumer cost information that opponents have been asking for, and the PSC staff declined to press the issue.
“In order to win in a court of law, it helps to win in the court of public opinion,” Learner says. Rob Danielson agrees. He’s the force behind SOUL of Wisconsin (Save our Unique Landscape), the oldest and one of the most influential groups opposing the lines. “I communicate with people who have beat these transmission lines in other states, and the uniform response that I hear is you have to have a very large public opposition. You have to have people at the public hearings.”
Public hearings will be held June 25 in Lancaster, June 26 in Madison, and June 27 in Dodgeville, afternoon and evening sessions each day. For details see psc.wi.gov.
