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State of Wisconsin & American Transmission Company Team Up to Screw Local Workers & Farmers
by Adam Ritscher
For years the American Transmission Company has been trying, with a lot of success, to intimidate and bribe local governments, courts and regulatory bodies to give it a green light for the Arrowhead-Weston line. The Arrowhead-Weston, if built, will be a massive 345 Kilovolt (that’s 345,000 volts!) bulk transmission line that will allow ATC to sell cheap electricity from the Manitoba Hydro project in Canada to the Chicago area, where it could make a handsome profit underselling existing electric providers.
It’s a project that from the very beginning has raised alarm bells from a whole host of activists, farmers, environmentalists, local people who would be along the route, and others.
For one thing the cheap electricity that this line would transmit is generated by a series of massive hydroelectric dams on Cree land in Canada. In the process of building these dams whole rivers were reversed, hundreds of Cree were dislocated and the entire social and economic fabric of their communities destroyed.
And it doesn’t get much better down the line! If this line is built it would disrupt hundreds of farms (an estimated 850 would be affected), pose a serious health and safety risk given the magnetic field such a massive amount of electricity generates, the risk of “arcing” (farmers have been warned they’ll need to drag a chain behind their tractors to avoid being electrocuted, and can’t even raise a shovel or hoe above their heads near the line), and the possibility of the electricity corroding a buried gas pipeline that runs along part of the route. And then there’s the environmental and ascetic aspects of building hundreds of massive 13 story, 140 foot rusted metal poles across hundreds of miles of fields, forests and wetlands.
Such things are matters of grave concern for the folks who will be affected by this line, but naturally are either denied or poo-poohed by the consortium of utility companies that make up the American Transmission Company. For them the only major area of concern is how much money they’ll make, and how soon they can start making it.
Faced with having to do battle with this corporate leviathon, opponents of the Arrowhead-Weston came together in a group called Save Our Unique Lands, and for five years have fought an uphill battle as local government and state agencies, one after the other, caved in to the traveling snake oil salesmen of ATC.
But things were dramatically turned around on Feb. 2 of this year when SOUL, Socialist Action, and other local activists turned out almost 400 people at a Douglas County Board meeting in Superior, WI, convincing the Board members to vote “No!” to negotiating with ATC – and thus stopping the line in its tracks.
This incredible victory was followed up by neighboring Washburn County deciding to put off deciding whether or not to negotiate with ATC, and a lawsuit by SOUL forcing the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to suspend its permit to allow ATC to build in the state pending a second look at the likely environmental impact of the line.
Things were looking good for the good people of northern Wisconsin! The people had spoken and had won the day – or so it seemed. For as it turned out the profit-hungry American Transmission Company had a trump card up its sleeve that it was about to play.
Enter the Montgomery Bill – a proposed piece of legislation that would essentially allow a private company to force a local government to let it use its lands whether it wanted them to or not, providing they got permission from the state. In other words if MacDonald’s buys a couple of politicians in Madison they can then go ahead and forcibly build a restaurant in a local City Hall or County Courthouse, and there’d be nothing the local government could do about it.
The law provides that once the state says a project has its blessing, a local government has 90 days to begin “good faith negotiations” with the private company, or else a state arbitrator will come in and just tell them how it’ll be and that’ll be that.
An incredibly nasty piece of legislation, designed to do an incredibly nasty job – taking away the right of people to have a say in what goes on in their own backyard. Realizing that the Arrowhead-Weston line couldn’t be built without crossing county land in Douglas County, ATC simply snapped their fingers and their mercenary politicians changed the law at the state level.
Opponents of the Arrowhead-Weston were shocked when the news of this proposed new legislation first broke, but assumed it would never pass. But then it passed the state legislature. And then it passed the state senate. Both the Democratic and Republican parties seemed to be tripping over themselves to show how useful they could be to big business.
Following all this a terrified Douglas County Board voted to begin negotiations with ATC, though with the provision that if the Montgomery Bill didn’t get the Governor’s signature negotiations would be broke off. A desperate series of anti-Montogmery Bill pickets were held by SOUL and Socialist Action in Superior, WI to try and stem the tide. But on July 21 Democratic Governor Jim Doyle signed the Montgomery Bill it into law. And now the Douglas County Board will have to begin negotiations, or be in violation of the law.
The continued, massive outpouring of popular opposition to this for-profit line was blatantly ignored by those who claim to represent us. In a tragic experience, thousands of farmers and working people got a lesson in whose side the big newspapers and politicians are on when it comes to struggles between working people and big business. But with that lesson in mind, the opponents of the Arrowhead-Weston have pledged to continue to fight against this for-profit line, despite the new legislation. It will be an incredibly uphill battle from here on out, but we cannot let the likes of the American Transmission Company destroy our livelihoods, our quality of life and our rights for the sake of their profits!
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