3/19/2007

Dear Mr. Fristik,

I write today to provide comments, in addition to those I sent you on August 29th, 2006, imploring you to stand up for the rule of law and reason over the rule of cronies.

The main problem with this coal-fired plant and the FEIS documents that surround it is that the Bush Administration is riddled with political hacks and loyalists who put party before competence and country. News stories the last couple of weeks constantly bear this out from Walter Reed Hospital to the Federal Prosecutors' scandal. There is an overwhelming specter of 'heck of a job Brownie' from Katrina fame folks multiplied a hundred fold through-out all aspects of the current administration. They obviously favor business over public representation at all costs. Their energy policies are inherently suspect.

The FEIS is shot full of holes effecting its credibility mostly by sins of omission. Even an entire section referred to in the contents has been mysteriously redacted from the printed and on-line versions. Until it reappears the FEIS is by definition incomplete and invalid.

(The missing section is in Appendix E of Volume 2. If you go to Appendix E and check that appendix' Table of Contents, a section 3.0 -Results and Discussion- is listed. The section is 12+ pages long. When we page thru Appendix E in our paper volume, the pages go right from 2-3 to 4-1.)

Then there is the chronic issue of the wrong e-mail and regular postal mail addresses being distributed to the public from your office last summer and again this winter. If you can't even find a typo or correct mistakes made for important and essential contact information how is anyone supposed to trust the accuracy of the rest of the document?

Finally, there is the elephant in the room, as the saying goes. A recent article headlined in the Great Falls Tribune on page two of the Sunday March 11th edition reads: CLIMATE RESEARCHERS SEE GRIM FUTURE FOR PLANET. It contains this quote: "within a couple decades...hundreds of millions of people won't have enough water". So we are going to engage in a process at the Highwood Plant that literally uses up millions of gallons of water while at the same time adding to the problem that makes water scarce?

Which brings me back to my initial point. Due to the inherent incompetence and misplaced loyalty displayed by your superiors, global climate change has been sytematically ignored at our own peril. It is up to public servants like yourself, I would hope, to oversee and overrule such blindness to reality. The public comment stage is your best opportunity to inject balance into a fraudulently based process that ignores the obvious and rewards those who cherry-pick "facts". Please nullify this flawed proposition and put a stop to this risky venture that enriches the few at the expense of the many.

We do not want to be dosed with tons of harmful chemicals that this plant will produce against our wills. It is immoral, unethical and a crime against humanity. The FEIS fails to tell the whole picture and that is no accident. We are counting on you to use the weight of similar public comments and make the tough yet right choice. We have your back. Thank-you.

Sincerely,

Doug Wendt

August 29th, 2006

To Whom It May Concern,

After attending the recent hearing held in Great Falls regarding the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Highwood Generating Station and witnessing that nearly every proponent had a vested interest in the project I began to wonder how personal job security continually trumps reason and the common good. Why is it that Bison Engineering, which has failed in a similar plant and promises in northwest Montana, and Alstom, the two rarely mentioned movers behind this project, support it against all logic? Like in the recent book by John Perkins, CONFESSIONS OF AN ECONOMIC HIT MAN: HOW THE U.S. USES GLOBALIZATION TO CHEAT POOR COUNTRIES OUT OF TRILLIONS, North Central Montana is being treated like a third world nation in this instance since Bison and Alstom will make their money no matter what else happens, even if the plant is obsolete before or after completion.

I have looked at the DEIS and have the following succinct concerns. The HGS will create a closed loop that only amplifies and exacerbates problems. While adding to the source of global warming the HGS will also consume and waste a tremendous amount of water daily. This precious resource will become more scarce as the greenhouse effects escalate. When everyone gins up their air conditioners to fight longer periods of unusual oppressive heat, we subsequently will need more power, which we need to use more water to create while the H2O's supply is increasingly being diminished. This absurd perpetual unintended consequences machine will become the very definition of what's commonly called 'spiraling out of control'. The result is all problems and no solutions. Please explain how we get out of this conundrum if the proposed plant goes forward.

Another area that begs for some common sense is the plan to extract coal from southeast Montana, ship it here, only to deliver the power back to where the coal came from. This is inefficient and subject to debilitating rising costs and significant power loss through lengthy transmission lines. If the IGCC alternative were seriously considered you would find that it can be done with the minimal type of water resources available where the coal is while largely reducing any transmission lines.

The most glaring omission from the DEIS is its total lack of a human scaled alternative. What if a fraction of the proposed plants finances were used to create a new, smaller grid system of alternative energy sources created by wind, solar and gravity-based generators supplied by the individual members of the coops' own farmers, ranchers and others? Isn't this the original idea of what a cooperative used to and should be? This method would also help alleviate the ever-increasing hardships faced by today's agriculturists and livestock managers etc. by paying them for their excess power. With Montana's wide-ranging weather patterns the either the sun is shining, the wind is blowing or the water is running somewhere nearly all the time.

The DEIS needs to think outside the box of the current corrupt system that favors Goliath and punishes David. Courting economic hit men financing is wasteful on a massive scale and a poor alternative to the independent spirit of Montanans. I also question SME's assertion that the electricity will become unaffordable for 120,000 Montanans when BPA withdraws their purchase rights in 2008-2011. The Rural Utility Service needs to investigate this assertion. The Central Montana Electric Co-ops that already service our region have indicated in private conversations that, if necessary, they will assimilate SME's customer base which, in reality, is nearly half of what is claimed. Thus there is plenty of time for the alleged liabilities of a far superior IGCC plant to be mitigated.

Please don't let the fiasco of energy deregulation beget this particular step-child. The question before us is what constitutes acceptable adverse-free forms of energy in the 21st Century. The HGS doesn't rise to that standard. The DEIS is a deeply flawed and incomplete document. The proposal is expensive, unreliable and risky. Its promise of stable, low cost, long-term results is exactly what deregulation promised. Please elaborate why these same assurances from the same cast of characters are any different this time. We need a plan EVERYONE can be proud of, not just those with monetary interests.

Sincerely,

Doug Wendt