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Leaders should stop spending tax money in fight with Duke
Last week’s final environmental assessment for Duke Energy’s local hydroelectric projects brought the proposed removal of the Dillsboro Dam a step closer to reality.
We’re still having a hard time understanding why some $83,000 of taxpayer money is being spent by our elected officials to fight a plan that would bring $350,000 into the county to be used for greenways or improvements at Glenville’s Andrews Park.
One reason we don’t understand it is that county commissioners haven’t often discussed it when the public could hear. Typically they’ve claimed attorney-client privilege, because some $55,000 of that money has gone to energy attorney Paul Nolan of Alexandria, Va. The most detailed conversation we’ve yet heard was in May 2005, and it was between county Manager Ken Westmoreland and the Webster town board, who joined county commissioners as intervenors.
Interestingly, Westmoreland led Webster leaders to believe he had to have a decision by June 1, 2005, in order to meet a filing deadline. Webster held a special meeting to act on the matter, which meant one of their planning board members – a scientist who favors the dam’s removal – could not be present to plead the other side in front of his town board members. The agreement in question was not filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission until June 16, 2005.
Another troubling factor is county leaders’ alliance with property owners’ groups whose main goal seems to be limiting public access. An alternate agreement filed by Jackson and Macon counties would allow Lake Glenville homeowners to hold leases on Duke Energy’s lakeshore buffer zone, which is supposedly to allow public access. Likewise, Westmoreland said that county leaders oppose recreational releases in the bypassed West Fork because the water would “trespass” on private property.
Jackson County is blessed with the Tuckaseigee River, but it’s not ours alone. Just like the sky and ocean, no one owns the waterways. The Federal Power Act charges certain agencies with looking out for the environment and with ensuring a balanced agreement that does its best to be fair to everyone involved.
The Cooperative Stakeholders Agreement, hammered out over several years by Duke, resource agencies, local governments and private groups, appears to be more of a balance than Jackson County’s somewhat greedy proposal.
Local control is wonderful most of the time. But sometimes, as the saying goes, it makes it hard to see the forest for the trees. Those advocating to save the dam should remind themselves of how hard individuals fought and protested against the Great Smoky Mountains National Park or Fontana Dam. Would they now say the Park was a bad idea or that this region could do without the energy provided by Fontana – or Duke’s Thorpe and Nantahala plants, for that matter?
Jackson County is a wonderful, unique place, but this issue transcends local politics. Congress has placed authority in the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which relies on its staff scientists and analysts, for a reason.
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