Why OPALCO’s “Essential Public Facilities” Push Deserves Public Scrutiny
||| FROM ELISABETH ROBSON |||
San Juan County’s comprehensive plan is at a crossroads. OPALCO has proposed language that would designate its major energy projects as “essential public facilities.” On the surface, this might sound like a harmless bit of utility housekeeping. In reality, it’s a dramatic shift that would take the most consequential, costly projects in our county out of the normal public process.
If OPALCO’s edits are adopted, members and neighbors would no longer have the ability to meaningfully block or redirect these projects. Once a project is labeled “essential,” it can bypass many local land-use restrictions, leaving residents with little recourse if the size, location, or impacts of a solar farm or battery installation prove unacceptable. That’s a big loss for democratic accountability in a member-owned cooperative.
(References: RCW 36.70A.200, Siting of essential public facilities—Limitation on liability and WAC 365-196-550, Essential public facilities.)
Why is this so concerning? Because OPALCO is quietly building toward an enormous gamble: eliminating the need for the undersea cable that brings electricity from the mainland. On paper, the idea is framed as “resilience.” But the scale of what would be required is breathtaking.
To fully supply the islands without a mainland connection, OPALCO would need on the order of 180 megawatts of solar power and hundreds of megawatt-hours of batteries. Even using conservative cost estimates, that’s $500 million to almost $1 billion in capital expenses, before counting the transmission upgrades and land acquisition—about 1,500 acres for 180MW and batteries—such projects demand. For comparison, the cooperative’s annual operating budget is less than a tenth of that. This would be the single most expensive undertaking in OPALCO’s history, and the bill would ultimately land on members.
Yes, resilience is important. No one wants to freeze in the dark during a winter storm. But resilience has many forms, and it does not require dismantling public input or mortgaging the county for a dream of total energy independence. True resilience should start with dramatically reducing electricity demand, especially from the oversized homes that consume the most. Here in San Juan County, many wealthy residents use far more power than the average household. Asking those with the largest energy footprints to cut back would be cheaper, fairer, and far less disruptive than building massive projects that every member must pay for. A more balanced approach—upgrading the existing cable when needed, pairing it with targeted local generation and storage, dramatically reducing electricity demand, and eliminating Washington State’s incentives to data centers—could strengthen reliability without bankrupting the co-op or silencing its members.
The people of San Juan County deserve a real voice in shaping our energy future. Declaring OPALCO’s mega-projects “essential public facilities” would take that voice away. Now is the time for members to speak up. Attend the county hearings, submit public comments on the comprehensive plan, and let officials know that resilience should be built on conservation, fairness, and accountability, not by stripping the public of its right to decide.
Email compplan@sanjuancountywa.gov to submit your comments.
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Thanks, Elizabeth. Your timing is wonderful. Members need to step up and force OPALCO to do a better job at educating the public as to the full costs and benefits of various strategies to gain “resilience” out here. What I see is often one-off proposals needed NOW without adequate connecting of the dots of what else would have to be constructed. The upcoming community meetings are important.
I do not ever remember OPALCO claiming that we could or should completely disconnect from the BPA / mainland. Enforced conservation is important but wealthy people do not care at any realistic price point we could hope for. I don’t think that the numbers indicate that strong conservation measures can make a significant difference in avoiding peak use problems. Growth is inevitable and we are already way up Shit Creek without a paddle. But solutions must be found.
I tend to support the essential public facilities approach because NIMBY is killing development even for the public good.
OPALCO’s articles repeatedly talk about 1) “preventing a blackout” (which would require enough electricity generation to match demand for the entire county unless they are talking only about certain microgrids, but they rarely mention that) and 2) “energy independence” which I read as, again, electricity generation to match demand for the entire county. (Eventually; obviously it would take a while to get there.)
There are solutions. We cut way way way back on demand. We stop WA from handing out invitations and our tax $$ to corporations to please come and use more electricity here in the state. We recognize that infinite growth in a finite county / on a finite planet is a recipe for suicide.
Please read through OPALCO’s proposed changes to the Utilities Element. You will see that they propose deleting all the “goals” that aim to protect nature or mitigate for harms because “essential public facility” basically makes all of that moot. Why? Because paving the islands over with solar can obviously not be done without harming the environment here. An environment we all rely on for life. They understand that, which is why they propose eliminating those goals in service to energy independence. We can’t have both.
Are we really willing to hand the future of the San Juan County environment over to a utility company serving a county hell bent on infinite growth? (That’s not hyperbolic; read the comp plan. It is structured entirely around growth.) Are we really okay with losing our right to say “No” to energy projects? I’m not.
Steve Ulvi is correct. OPALCO has never claimed that we do not need undersea cables to the mainland, and in fact we have been working hard to ADD another undersea cables to the mainland to handle projected increases in electricity demand. Over the last year and a half, we have pursued Department of Energy funding to help add a third cable to the mainland, in fact — although as everyone knows, such grant funding is no longer available at the Federal level.
In no way, shape or form is OPALCO claiming that we do not need undersea cables to the mainland. We are attempting to plan for two things:
(1) Future demand growth that outstrips the capacity of our existing cables to supply, especially if one of the two existing cables is out of commission or needs maintainence.
(2) Some capacity for local generation which would allow us to keep hospitals, first responders, and other critical infrastructure up and running in the event of a mainland outage.
We have experienced several short mainland outages in the last year or two as Puget Sound Energy (which carries our electricity from BPA to the Washington Park cable terminal in Anacortes) has needed to do essential maintenance of poles and infrastructure. Imagine how difficult it would be to weather a longer mainland outage.
We at OPALCO are not planning for “total energy independence” from the mainland — at no meeting, in no document or presentation have we ever claimed that. We constantly discuss the need to manage our mainland connection, improve it, but yes — build some additional local capacity that can help us meet demand and weather mainland outages.
I speak for myself here, although I am an OPALCO board member. I encourage anyone reading this to attend any of our monthly board meetings — at which we discuss all of this at length regularly. And for working people who cannot attend live, please view our recordings, or come to ANY of our town hall meetings where we discuss this very topic. Please.
Mark Madsen
Board Member, San Juan Island.
It is important to attend the local meetings scheduled by OPALCO to inform the public. In my opinion we need more tools for energy independence and while Elisabeth’s letter provides ideas that will help, the NIMBYs in our community are not helping. I am not worried about OPALCO covering your estimated 1500 acres with solar panels Elizabeth. I’m more worried they won’t be able to install any because of extremist predictions of environmental harm like yours. Example: the proposed solar farm on San Juan, where the design allowed continued grazing by farm animals and even benefited them with shade. It wasn’t even prime farm land and it was situated at the juncture of two roads. I think the Essential Public Facilities designation is a good idea. OPALCO is a coop. The community has a say through its board and attendance at meetings. We need more layers of energy independence including generating our own. It’s common sense.
Well said Mark Madsen.
It’s quite obvious the author does not listen to OPALCO board meetings or attend the public OPALCO meetings, or she would know about OPALCO’s three often discussed underwater cable plans to the mainland.
Stopping growth in San Juan County is never going to happen, period. Inadequate ferry capacity, high home prices, and a seasonal economy are going to be the limiting factors that slow SJC growth. But the rich are getting richer, and SJC is always going to be a highly desired destination for people who want a quieter semi- rural life, less noise and traffic, lower taxes, and investors taking advantage of the stunning liberal federal tax advantages of owning a vacation rental property.
Government cannot limit, and probably shouldn’t, dictate the size of someone’s house. The best the county government can do is make new building as energy efficient as economical possible, and OPALCO has been a leader in promoting energy efficiency upgrades for existing structures, both commercial and residential.
More electrical energy is absolutely going to be required in San Juan County in the future. That’s just a fact.
The history of the world is that it rarely goes back in time. Someday humans are possibly going to extinct from over development and over population, but the SJC comp plan isn’t going to change that one way or the other.
“The history of the world is that it rarely goes back in time. Someday humans are possibly going to extinct from over development and over population, but the SJC comp plan isn’t going to change that one way or the other.”
Spittlefuck — I cannot remember having ever read anything so simplicitly stupid… such a statement surely qualifying for the Darwin awards. I guess we should just roll over and play dead… thus ensuring our demise.
I am very aware of the underwater cable plans to the mainland.
Thank you all for your comments. It’s clear that the overall sentiment is that the public is fine with the EPF designation and losing the ability to say no to these projects, and that growth and access to electricity trumps environmental concerns. I appreciate the clarity from the public.
I prefer not to read comments like “it’s quite obvious the author does not …” Shouldn’t we pause before posting personal comments about a neighbor asking important local questions ?
To Mr. Dashiell’s point, even if more energy is going to be required for a time, at what cost ? What is the greenhouse gas impact and other effects of meeting every OPALCO customer’s every need ? And if we had a comprehensive plan aiming at major energy reductions it could help postpone the human extinction, especially if other towns, states and countries start cooperating, which they were on the path to doing when …
I wish we were saying, “there’s not enough energy in the future to keep going like this, we’ve got to reduce.” I think government should dictate the size of one’s house if having too big a house makes it far worse for the rest of us. In an illustrative hypotetical, if there are ten residential OPALCO users using 50% of the power supply, then I think the membership should consider proposals that would limit unlimited power consumption.
I’m no conservation angel, I’ve got a hot tub and a towel warmer, I’ve got multiple refrigerators and freezers, I’ve got an electric car and two electric bikes I charge at home. But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t consider sacrifice and rations especially if others were willing, too.
Anyway, the conclusion that I draw from listening to OPALCO board meetings is not that we need forever to keep adding more cables and lcoal power generation at any cost to meet ever-expanding demands … it’s that we can’t.
I am really disheartened by the turn to personal attacks for nothing more than reasonable comments framing the issue. The Comp Plan is brimful of environmental, social, and cultural protection goals for a tiny, hardly populated archipelago that has been deeply abused for hundreds of years. The emission goals and strict ecology policies regarding adapting to great changes and limiting our contributions to climate change as much as possible. In case you haven’t noticed many other areas in the west are becoming hell-holes. To suggest that a few hundred acres of carefully sited and built islands solar and battery sites in combination with conservations and higher and higher mainland electricity contracts as our region explodes in growth is outrageously destructive is naive in the extreme.
I think it is clear that the general membership needs to wake up and create solutions that will allow a reasonable quality of life here. Any notion that these islands are somehow ecotopia or sacrosanct in the terrible future we have all created and are now allowing our government to throw fuel on the quiet inferno is fantasy.
As a life long environmentalist and conservationist who has lived with intention I have to recognize that the entire herd of apocalyptic horses are out of the barn and over the hill. Our options and choices get tougher with the passage of every decade.
Of all people you Elizabeth know that a sample size of 6 people is not meaningful. See you all at the meetings!!!
While I respect the intelligence and technical strengths of OPALCO’s Board members and the executive leadership, I’ve been troubled in recent years by a logical contradiction in OPALCO’s energy policies. On the one hand promoting and subsidizing the “electrification of everything” while at the same time threatening us with blackouts if we don’t give them a free hand to install whatever technologies they want, wherever they want to site them. Frustrated by opposition to their approach, OPALCO now proposes to take away the last ability island residents and county government has to influence which technologies should be used to satisfy future electricity demand, the scope of those technologies, and where they should be sited.
With this essential public utility designation proposal, OPALCO is transforming itself from an accountable public utility, subject to the environmental protections that have preserved our islands for decades, to an autocratic institution that will brook no opposition to its determination to, for example, erect extensive solar facilities on multiple islands, install dangerous battery systems with a history of toxic fires and contamination, or resort to huge tidal machines with no demonstrated benefits over hydropower. In effect, OPALCO discounts the reasons why most of us have chosen to live here: for the beauty, serenity and quality of the natural environment.
OPALCO appears to have adopted the mainland attitude that unlimited growth is a social good, even though, as islands, our county is inherently and strictly limited in resources and available land area. They have adopted the position that no restrictions should be placed on the growth of electricity demand. This ignores the precedent set by water limitations across the U.S., especially in the Southwest, where new housing permits cannot be issued because the water is not available. SJC government and OPALCO should pay attention to this precedent and, if necessary, consider a moratorium on new housing permits as we face a somewhat analogous situation with respect to electricity supply.
Actions Required:
OPALCO should withdraw their proposal until they hold a referendum of members on the future of electricity supply and demand, specifically presenting multiple options for meeting the relatively few hours a year of peak demand, including cost-effective and reliable options in addition to solar and batteries.
Since it cannot currently guarantee security of electricity supply going forward, threatening us with blackouts, OPALCO should immediately stop promoting and subsidizing the “electrification of everything” and revise downward its demand models accordingly.
OPALCO should join with other regional investor-owned utilities to lobby state-government to oppose the siting of data centers and chip foundries in the state of Washington on the backs of retail electricity rate payers.
One reason the Bailer Hill agri-solar project has been delayed is that OPALCO did not perform an adequate wetlands survey.
I support the concept of Agri-Solar, but I am also very concerned about maintaining our existing aquifer recharge capacity. Wetlands recharge our groundwater. If an Agri-Solar installation changes the surface drainage patterns significantly, our well water supplies would be affected.
Water is essential for life. That is why our county’s Department of Health is required to determine if new developments will have adequate water.
If OPALCO is granted permission to ignore the requirements for a thorough wetlands delineation, our well water supply will be potentially reduced or the patterns of ground water recharge will be changed.
All of San Juan County has been designated as a “Critical Aquifer Recharge Area” by previous County Councils under the Growth Management Act. If OPALCO is allowed to ignore Agri-Solar and Community-scale solar impacts to groundwater supplies, they and our county could be challenged under the Growth Management Act.
Why not just do proper wetland surveys OPALCO?
I largely agree with Arthur Winer — especially his last point. It makes absolutely NO SENSE to be powering massive new data centers with existing BPA hydropower, which will only drive our own electricity rates sky high. And it makes even less sense to be granting tax breaks to corporate giants like Amazon and Microsoft to build such data centers in WA state. I hope Governor Ferguson’s task force members (and Alex Ramel) are listening.
Hi,
The Essential Public Facilities designation does not exclude OPALCO from doing all of the environmental permitting requirements such as wetland delineation.
Here are some details on what the Essential Public Facility designation means for OPALCO: https://www.opalco.com/quick-fact-san-juan-county-comprehensive-plan/2025/04/
OPALCO has been talking about these suggested updates to the Comp Plan for more than 6 months through various communication channels. Here are all of our suggested edits to the Comp Plan: https://www.opalco.com/quick-fact-san-juan-county-comprehensive-plan/2025/04/.
@Janet OPALCO did a wetland delineation for Bailer Hill as part of our initial permit application. At the last minute – additional requirements were added to this so we are in the process of doing that. Due to timing constraints related to the low income grant OPALCO received from the State, OPALCO was not going to be able to finish this in time to receive those funds so we are working to site a project on Decatur in order to still leverage these funds to support our energy assistance program. We still plan to do the additional delineation and site a project on Bailer Hill.
Come to our public meetings this week and discuss the myriad of issues and challenges we are facing related to our energy future! http://www.opalco.com/events
Forgive me if I’ve begun to take all this a bit personally – I’ve come to believe that the polity of the day serves only to obscure the reality of the moment… and that it is killing us. I believe, as I saw it written somewhere recently, that when you blame tone instead of truth you allow the weaponization of policies that allow false narratives to emerge.
Interesting comments all… with some, obviously ignoring the bigger picture, sounding like apologists for what we must keep doing in order to keep our standard of living and exuberant economy flowing as per normal, (or should I say “hyper-normal”), and in spite of where we know it’s taking us. Though I appreciate OPALCO and their efforts, I also revere public input when it comes to matters of concern, and I hope that both will be honored.
With what we have learned about the direction that all this (growth) is taking us, I used to wonder “Why?” But knowing what we know now I simply say, “Why ask why?” We seemingly live in a fantasy world that makes no sense whatsoever. We are where we are because of the profound ignorance of people, and decades of profound failure in public planning.
“We mostly do what we want when we want, no matter the environment. This has created a culture which is more wedded to its ideologies than reality. Thanks to our technological ability to transform the conditions of our lives, creating steady states of temperature, comfort and access, we have lost sight of the opposites which govern our existence.” Rachel Donald (Planet Critical)
In their utilities element OPALCO writes, in bold!: “The need for locally generated electricity from utility-scale renewables and
other sources is vital to prevent economic disruption and achieve the County
Vision of energy independence “…
Yet several commentators seem to think the author has overstated these goal. I feel OPALCO’s own language is VERY misleading.
There is information out there from the planning department, from the state. When being asked to give up something as important as your input and consent, don’t get your information from who’s asking. If it really makes little difference, why does OPALCO want this EPF distinction so much?Find out what the state considers an Essential Public Facility. I will provide the link. Look at the draft of the comp plan. Get information from the Planing Department. Most of the islands don’t have a forested area for them to purchase secretively and clear cut like Decatur but learn what a conditional use permit is and how the county council will no longer be able to deny them to a EPF. I am not asking you to agree. I am asking you to think critically and be informed by someone other than those seeking your silence.
Here is where you can see what the state says an EPF is:
https://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=36.70A.200
Here is the current draft:
https://www.opalco.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Comp-Plan-Utility-Element-OPALCO-Third-Draft-202505.pdf?fbclid=IwZnRzaAM1WYZleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHiyi92hJcAJ1ybak9RRFnR3NaYm0mrbHJIuRnT6ftZ3hxav6474_7jXVEsfC_aem_LAXkOJu_eL4cA6Rc6ZTPnA
This whole situation is very sad. My family has lived on Decatur for generations. We have dealt with OPALCO almost 90 years. My family provided many of the easements to lay the cable. It sold Opalco the property for the substation for a few hundred dollars. My grandfather was a tremendous believer in progress and like most, easily provided easements to OPALCO for free. With an EPF distinction, will they have to ask or can they just take your property by eminent domain? Maybe… maybe not, but this makes it much easier for them to try. I am not anti solar at ALL but our experience here on Decatur has been very negative. Please don’t read about it on their website as it is not a factual representation .
Most importantly, remember the word ESSENTIAL.
These are panels that work 1/2 as well as they do in a sunny climate like Southern California. We are very reliant on batteries and the fire danger may not seem significant to some of you but on Decatur , the location of the site has no water, no well and the island has no fire district. I am not asking you to consider us but to consider the level of concern that OPALCO has for Decatur members.
Brava, Elizabeth Robson – a lone voice of clarity and sanity in a wilderness of urbanization in a rural island archipelago. You bring forward all the reasons why the OPALCO membership should resist the idea of OPALCO being granted EPF status by Council. As a long-term forced ‘urbanite’ of Eastsound UGA due to low income status while I’ve watched the County and the Growth Industry promote unlimited growth and destruction of the largest contiguous mixed forest riparian wetland watershed on Orcas as far as I know), I stand with you and others who are against EPF status for OPALCO. Sadly, most people don’t even know about it or what’s at stake. I didn’t until I read this tonight. Real transparency, IMO, would be more educational (not scaremongering) letters in the papers and to every OPALCO member from the County and OPALCO spelling out exactly what EPF would mean.
The Comp Plan process is an insult to the dedicated volunteers who take on years of trying to represent our many voices and views. How many times have islanders given their hearts, souls, and vision to hope that their/our wishes and dreams and good ideas be put into practice, only to see everything except economic growth trump everything else on the list? It hurts too much to watch this again. They all want us to go to meetings, share our vision, do this or that workshop, blahblahblah – when our course was decided by them all along well before the workshops, and this is just the minimum requirement for Council to pass whatever was already preordained anyway. Prove me wrong.
The only thing that going to all those meetings and giving Public Access does is put our views on the record for 7 years. And maybe it gives us legal standing for suing, or bringing the issues to the Hearings Examiner, but what a waste of money, time and energy when we could be putting our minds and hearts together to solve our problems collaboratively (the true meaning of Cooperative) – and if even the Hearings Examiner is pro growth, what would be the point?
Elizabeth Robson, Stephen Bernheim, Arthur Winer, Janet Alderton all give reasonable concerns, solutions and actions to counter some of the high demand for electricity. In a word – as all these people have touched on – Water. The issue is Water. Steve Ulvi also brings up concerns but that said, why isn’t anyone talking about the battery sites? What is ‘clean’ about the batteries needed to run electric micro-grids? What third world countries are being mined and their ecosystems destroyed for our comfort and entitlement? And what are our representatives doing by allowing huge corporate data centers to move to Washington? A few lone voices here are speaking about how AI is a huge gobbler of electricity, driving demand and prices for us, way up.
We don’t have Publicly Owned Water and Power utilities on Orcas. Our water and our electricity are privatized. This is indeed worrisome and we’re way ‘ahead’ of the trend of privatizing essential utilities in this country – if you can call that ‘good.’
There are so many reasons why the County should not grant EPF status to OPALCO. No doubt any of us not going to meetings will be attacked as naive, uninformed, not knowing what we’re talking about – never mind decades of witnessing how this all plays out, time and again in every SJC Comp Plan final version which is all about continuing unlimited, unmitigated growth.
As for EPF status finally silencing the NIMBYS, the NIMBYS silenced the majority of the population who are too poor or working too many jobs to attend OPALCO meetings – and who are thrust into UGAs, only to see them become ‘chic’ and convenient places to be if you can afford one of the million dollar condos proliferating like mushrooms after a rainstorm. On Orcas, ours is such poorly chosen site to have all this industrialization and deforestation – and I’ll keep repeating why this is so, every chance I get.
Folks who live well outside of UGAs are the NIMBYS who will keep insisting not in THEIR back yards, so all will end up in the UGAs anyway, which is such a poor idea when you consider soil liquefaction, sea level rise, and what would happen to infrastructure in a wildfire in a UGA of tightly dense clustered housing. On Orcas, there is a huge push to expand our UGA and gobble up the last nearby forests for lack of what our numbers of affordable housing should be, in order to keep up with the growth and ever widening income disparity gap (San Juan County is #1 in the USA) – and whoops… there go the rest of the forests and wetlands that buffer our village from the punishing winds, desertification and flooding that all the deforestation and destruction of our wetland watershed brings.
What kind of magical thinking would not even consider conservation, environmental impacts, and water issues as the backbone of any discussion we have about energy usage? I don’t even know what to say, other than the game is (still) rigged. The game has been rigged since before I got here. The game will likely always be rigged – and certainly so if OPALCO gets its wish. I wish I could think and feel differently about this. I cannot. There’s too much degradation, too much lost already, and too much at stake
Bless every soul asking the hard questions and fighting for our right to SOME say in a private coop. I’m of a mind to wonder, why wait? Why not take our grave concerns – for years, largely ignored – to the Hearings Examiner right now?
There is another reason for local generation not mentioned.
OPALCO’s (and therefore the members’ via OPALCO) contract with BPA allows us to receive power at a relatively low contracted rate … up to a stated maximum amount. We have in the past exceeded that amount. In those situations, BPA goes out to the market and buys power at the then market rate. Of course it is usually weather that causes the whole region to demand extra power, so the market rates can be near astronomical, and they change rapidly. BPA then bills OPALCO not only for the full contracted amount at the contracted rate, but also whatever it had to pay to meet OPALCO’s demand for power purchased on the open market And so, of course, we are hit with a surcharge. Anyone remember the last one? Our excess demand would be reduced by such power as we could generate here, in turn reducing the hit, particularly on those less able to pay their OPALCO bills in the first place.
A comment about the Comprehensive Pan: it generally outlines what the county intends, and acts as a brake on the expenditure of county general tax monies by limiting new projects to what’s within the plan. But no one should be under the impression that the Comprehensive Plan requires the county to actually do anything. Intentions are not actions.
The EPF designation is a means to keep a municipality from externalizing necessary burdens of an organized society onto other local governmental units. We are not the only people who care about the welfare of the place (in its broadest sense) where they live. EPF is the state’s way of saying, “Pick up your own socks!”
Do we all remember when OPALCO was censoring their own people, threatening to sue them, who were speaking out against the corruption during the Rock Island acquisition? Not a nice place.
Just last week on San Juan Island a distraught resident posted on a community page requesting assistance because they were being bullied by OPALCO. OPALCO was threatening to shut off their electricity if they did not approve an easement (and necessary tree clearing) across their property.
Essential Public Facility designation is a ‘red flag’ for me. I think it is critical that citizens have a voice in how we develop our islands.
Larry Bates, I DO remember. That was a super dirty deal that allows the CEO of OPALCO Foster Hildreth to collect his OPALCO salary AND a Rock Island salary for a combined total of just under 1/2 a million dollars!
(This information is on the OPALCO website)
OK. Let’s stipulate that OPALCO does things we don’t approve of, a judgment usually based on incomplete but emotionally arousing facts.
Is this an appropriate response to its attempt to increase county resilience?
Behaviors matter, especially from the top, and reflect the leadership DNA of those in charge — and those who we presumably trust. Despite legitimate concerns about the paralyzing effects of NIMBY resistance, I am against any kind of carte blanche giveaway of public input, especially when it’s a “co-op.” It seems to me that a balance can be struck between conservation, regulation, and renewable initiatives. Those kind of compromises are usually the most difficult to achieve, but the alternatives are far less appealing.
Ultimately, the situation we face is not OPALCO’s fault. We are in this situation because the county is growing, and more people are using more electricity and putting the entire county into a very difficult (and expensive) position.
I know that no one wants to talk about degrowth; that everyone thinks it’s unrealistic; that I’m nuts (or whatever). But if we want to preserve what little nature is left here (not that much thanks to logging, agriculture, development, pollution, tourism, etc., and if we don’t cut back, electricity generation projects), I believe we should at least allow degrowth on the table as an idea worth discussing.
OPALCO is caught in the middle: they are mandated by the state (CETA) to push electrification on us, and the County is mandated by the state (GMA) to push growth on us, while at the same time, these very things are creating the problem of too much demand for the systems we have in place. What a mess!
At the meeting today in Lopez, they had a poster with “What should we do?” None of the options presented were “Use far less electricity.” Why not?
Why is no one in the county willing to contemplate degrowth and reducing electricity demand? I know–it’s way out of the box thinking. But before responding “That’s not realistic”–we must ask ourselves, why, given the precarious situation we’re in, is it not worth having real, substantive, community discussions about it?
Well said, Elizabeth Robson. I appreciate your wanting to have these important and necessary conversations.. It’s good to see some other commenters be concerned about top down practices by OPALCO that still don’t sit well with those of us who remember, and to also see how you are consistently fair minded and factual, which actually helps to calm some of the emotions some of us are feeling (44 yrs of watching all of this has been so painful.) . No one can accuse you of emotional responses not based in factual evidence. You’ve done your homework and research and I for one respect you. I wish I were as fair minded. I’m not. I’m out of patience and heartbroken.
Conservation is the magic word and practice that would reduce our consumption. Degrowth isn’t a crazy or unrealistic idea. It’d have to be voluntary, and with pushback from a whole industry built on all facets of unlimited growth, it seems out of reach – other than by cataclysm. It was such a relief when we had a water moratorium in Eastsound on all new hookups, some years back. Water was the big issue then,. Water is going to be the big issue now and going forward. Carrying capacity is huge – the County refuses to face the truth about it or conduct a current study of it – and we are way beyond anything sustainable, and were decades ago. But it would still be great for those of us who want to, to have those necessary discussions.
Matthew Gilbert, succinct and on point! Thanks also to the other commenters who also remember the Rock Island fiasco. OPALCO doesn’t have a good track record for engendering trust – that was an ugly time that too many of us remember. Private utilities for essential Public services… how did we let this happen on Orcas Island?
Bill A., Regardless of what you think the Comp Plan is, and your assumptions about how you think we view it, the County keeps wanting the opinions of unpaid volunteers who give years out of their own lives to partake in advising the County on how to carry out what they need to do under the GMA- so it’s not meaningless or unimportant. What’s frustrating is that the People deeply involved have been sagely advising the County since the early 1990s on how best to carry out a balanced Vision and Plan in order to have more win-win solutions for all the Elements that are supposed to be equally represented. But then the County sides with big money, ever afraid of lawsuits – even though the GMA all along has stated that each rural County can do this how they want within certain guidelines (LAMIRDS instead of UGAs for instance) – and SJC chose unlimited growth, UGAs in sensitive watershed/wetland/marine environments, and economic development over any chance of balance – every single time. When you go on to accuse the people who question motives as doing so based on ‘incomplete but emotionally arousing facts,’ is your subtle blame of anyone against what you so insistently and relentlessly promote, any less emotional? Gosh, it gets tiring!
Elizabeth Robson is right; we need to have the discussions.
Thanks to OPALCO responding to many issues, some rational and fact-based and many emotional statements of options no longer available as in by-gone times, by holding true listening sessions. I believe that as a member co-op, we should show more highly salaried and compensated staff, challenged by the elected board. I do remember the taint of the Rock Island acquisition. It fascinates me that so many cannot focus on the very difficult mix of issues involved with avoiding prolonged winter blackouts and steep rate increases sure to come, and instead speak of population “degrowth”, national park like environmental protections, and extreme distrust of authority (it is our co-op!) as though they are issues that must be resolved before we can as island communities agree on some micro-grid sites being rapidly developed in the face of climate change impacts. I will be talking to my island OPALCO board member soon. Will you chose to stay in the harsh reality of the moment and seek imperfect, but effective solutions commensurate with our terrible circumstances, or holler at the clouds about what ought to be in a perfect world that has never existed?