A friend calls it psyhological entrapment. What amounts to a total disregard of process and environmental concerns, Minnesota Power recently signed a labor agreement with the Northern Wisconsin Building and Construction Trades Council to build a $700 million gas-fired power plant in Superior next spring.
The Nemadji Trail Energy Center was proposed in 2017 and has failed to secure the permits necessary to begin construction. Environmental groups have issued warnings and legal challenges, but apparently lobbyists for fossil fuels operate in a vacuum.
The generating cooperative, Dairyland Power, boasts that this plant will help us towards a “clean energy future”. They’re certain most people will accept the words “clean energy” and call it a day. They’re hoping ratepayers will ignore the price tag as well as the increased amount of energy required to run the plant. They’re hoping the calls for protecting the water; the people and their ancestral homeland by the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa will fall on deaf ears. They have not yet understood environmental justice or human rights.
The fossil fuel industry distorts facts regarding renewables and battery storage as insufficient. They dismiss the science that tells us there’s no more time to waste as we continue to extract resources from the earth. They ignore the health risks associated with methane emissions and burst pipelines. And they’re tying our children’s children to unsustainable systems.
What could possibly go wrong building a natural gas plant along a wetland corridor of the Nemadji River?
Had enough of entrapment? Contact your local cooperative (Vernon Electric Cooperative) or utility or contact Dairyland directly at 608-788-4000. Let them know where you stand on this ill-fated energy center.
The following is a fact sheet from Sierra Club
let kindness win 