Read the full PDF here: Friends of Lana`i Newsletter – April 1st 2013

Are the terms of a developer’s “rights” public?  FOL argues that in this case, unquestionably YES!!  These terms impact every ratepayer, resident and taxpayer in the State of Hawaii.  Our State’s entire energy future is being planned around Big Wind on Lana’i. HECO’s final draft RFP for the undersea cable and/or 200 or more MW of renewable energy is built around Big Wind on Lana’i!!

First Wind’s attempt to build 200 MW on Moloka’i was denied by the PUC BECAUSE THEY COULD NOT DEMONSTRATE SITE CONTROL! Can Castle & Cooke?

You decide:

http://news.akakutv.org/video/cautious-optimism-on-the-island-of-lanaʻi

http://nyti.ms/SVHfYi

There are three items that are likely to surface, very soon:

• Hawaiian Electric Company (HECO) will, sometime in 2012 (there have already been two delayed start dates),  issue a request for proposal (RFP) for the undersea cable and 200 MW of renewable power for O`ahu.  Now that the Legislature snuck through the bill that places EVERY PENNY of the cable costs in the wallets of HECO ratepayers, potential cable developers will flock to bid on this cable project.  And why not, given their guaranteed cost recovery and a projected return on investment of 15-20%?  (The original draft of this RFP REQUIRED every bid to include a cable connection to/from Lana’i; no exceptions.  If a bid did not include a Lana’i “spur,” it would not be considered.  On the day before a key legislative vote, HECO announced that it would remove this onerous provision -  but it now requires every cable bidder to explain why a Lana’i connection is not “economically” reasonable.)

• The second event is a revised Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS), scheduled for release late last year but now targeted for the end of this month (August).  Some of you may remember that the first version of this PEIS was resoundingly and overwhelmingly condemned for being incredibly short-sighted, badly-thought-out and a waste of time and taxpayer money.  It focused solely on Big Wind or No Big Wind, ignoring the Federally-required “any reasonable alternative” approach.  We hear that this time around it will include an examination of solar and geothermal as well, but we’ll have to wait to see.

• The third event is shrouded in secrecy: new majority landowner Larry Ellison (Oracle) granted David Murdock “development rights” to pursue a Lana’i wind power plant.  Most likely negotiated as part of the sales agreement, this missed-opportunity by Ellison to ease the deep divisions on Lana’i means that Murdock still intends to try and build the one-billion-dollar, destructive,  several hundred turbines on land he no longer owns.  Originally negotiated with then-Governor Linda Lingle (best known for her Superferry debacle, demonstrating a complete lack of sensitivity to environmental issues), Murdock’s Big Wind will require a massive incursion on Ellison’s property, and would irreparably destroy one of Lana’i’s most promoted tourist sites — the Garden of the Gods.
  

  South Point, Island of Hawaii

To us, it doesn’t matter who owns Ka’a ahupua’a.  Friends of Lana’i is committed to keeping the Keahiakawelo site and surrounding area from becoming O’ahu’s industrial park.

In contrast, the Big Wind project, designed to capture wind on Lana’i and Moloka’i and then transmit it through a 70 mile cable for the sole use of O`ahu, will cost a minimum of $3 billion dollars – that’s half a BILLION MORE than what we taxpayers paid for Curiosity to travel to Mars.

It’s time Hawaii residents ask themselves these key questions:

• Why should ratepayers and taxpayers pay already-wealthy mainland developers and investors $3 BILLION dollars to capture wind on  Lana’i and Moloka’i, which will inevitably cause irreparable damage to those islands, only to ship ALL of the power to O’ahu — when it will provide less than 10% of O’ahu’s electricity demands?
• Why is our state’s energy policy being set by developers and a shareholder-owned monopoly utility?  Why are we citizens not setting our state’s energy policy?

For the past three years, HECO and Castle & Cooke have pressed the arguments underpinning why Lana’i and Moloka’i should become industrial parks for O’ahu.  We have watched with disbelief while Castle & Cooke, HECO and some elected officials (e.g., Governor Abercrombie, Senators Gabbard and English…) made misleading arguments (“Lanai’s electric rates will go down by 40%; Big Wind on Lāna‛i will provide 25% of O’ahu’s electrical needs; the undersea cable provides greater security (really?  How is that?); the undersea cable bill only establishes a regulatory process,” etc, etc, etc.).

But Lingle is gone, and now Murdock is too; he no longer owns the land on which the project is proposed for Lana`i.  Even though Murdock “retained” some sort of development rights to the wind power plant, terms of which are being kept hidden from public view, we think it is time to CHANGE THE ARGUMENTS.

•  They say there will be jobs:  NO.  After the initial ground clearing, the majority employment slots will be mainland and/or specialist laborers.  A union member of the Kahuku construction crew told us that he (and his fellow union laborers) had been hired to work on First Wind’s ill-fated Kahuku wind project, only to be laid off three weeks later and replaced by non-union mainland workers.
•  They say our rates for electricity will go down: NO.  Nice idea, but empty promise, since the Public Utilities Commission (PUC), not HECO or Castle & Cooke, set electric rates.
• They say the recently-passed cable bill only gives the PUC the power to regulate the cable: NO.  The cable bill established a FINANCING scheme that will pass EVERY penny of cost onto HECO ratepayers.  It’s really a scheme to guarantee the cable developer a full refund of its costs — all from the wallets of HECO ratepayers – and a hefty rate of return on outside investor money.
•  They say that this will “keep Lana`i ‘green’”: NO.  None of the energy produced is for Lāna‛i; and after the third battery fire at Kahuku in a year, it’s questionable that the operation is “green” at all.  
• And last question:  Why should the Linda Lingle/David Murdock Big Wind on Lana’i/Moloka`i project cost us as taxpayers and ratepayers more than a trip to Mars?

Lana’i has a 1.2 MW solar power plant, built in the middle of abandoned — and bone dry — pineapple fields; it sits alone, approximately two miles from the Maui Electric (MECO) generating power plant.  Earlier this year, the solar facility was updated with a battery “storage” system.  The company that installed it?  Xtreme Power Company.

This should sound familiar, because Xtreme Power is the same company that installed the batteries that caught on fire at First Wind’s Kahuku wind power plant. Lana`i’s system is the same, but smaller and with less voltage running through it.

The building housing the batteries at Kahuku smoldered for days and is a total loss.  Why?  Largely because there was none of the chemical retardant needed to fight a battery fire on site.  Firefighters waited several hours for HECO to deliver what they needed to fight the blaze, but by then it was too late.

When we asked Castle & Cooke’s Lana’i Renewable Energy manager whether or not Lana’i’s battery storage system had the appropriate fire-fighting materials on site, he first called the Kahuku fire “a fluke,” then refused to answer the question.  David Murdock may be gone, but the culture of non-transparency, so evident with anything having to do with Big Wind, lives on:  “I know the answer to that question, but I won’t tell you that.”

So far the small Lana`i storage system has been operating for much of 2012 without any problem.  But the Kahuku fire was the third in a year, (that’s “a fluke?”) and it would be the height of arrogance to not prepare for a similar event on Lana`i.