Engaging Third Voices to Avoid the "Nuclear Option"

Nuclear power may be on the way back into vogue, but the nuclear option is something you want to stay away from in your public engagement.

Like many other cities, Boston struggles with homelessness. Oftentimes, as I walk through Downtown Crossing - a hive of downtown daytime activity - I am struck by how many business owners have chosen a particularly aggressive course of action to ensure that their restrooms remain free for the use of their customers only. Uninviting, hand-scrawled signage: "Bathroom for CUSTOMERS only." Locked bathrooms with token systems. Keys that are kept under guard at the checkout.

When I'm passing through the neighborhood, I am often on the hunt for a cup of coffee or a sandwich. Knowing that using the restroom in one business - even as a paying customer - may be more difficult than using it another has a real impact on my choices: I now patronize the places that have figured out a way to maintain open access without allowing the facilities to become squalid. I am sure it is not easy. The business owners have to be creative, proactive and persistent. But - whether they are selling coffee, croissants, or cantaloupe - the way they manage this situation has a direct impact on their bottom line. It gives them a competitive advantage of their competitors who have chosen to "go nuclear."

Making difficult choices is a part of every business, and it needs to be an important part of your public engagement. Oftentimes, those choices are going to require compromise, but if your project is worth it, so is the sacrifice. A stark example of the "nuclear option" is making news right now in energy in the Pacific Northwest. Oregon-based utility PacifiCorp has agreed - under duress - to decommission a series of hydroelectric dams in the Upper Klamath River along California's border with Oregon. In spite of the company's best efforts, they were not able to successfully engage natural third voices - like local farm groups - as partners in securing relicensure for the dams.

Without the dams in operation, PacifiCorp will have to find a way to replace the renewable, emissions-free energy that the dams provided. Regulators were joined by dam protestors in contending that the quest for new power can be done in a way that does not damage the environment anymore or put too much of a dent in consumers' pockets. And, things are certainly expected to go swimmingly for the salmon populations that the dams threatened.

But, the quest for clean replacement power may not be as easy as it has been made to sound. And, farmers in the basin are asking where the water to irrigate their farms - water that used to be regulated by the Klamath dams - will come from. Those farmers have been at the table throughout the negotiations on the fate of the dams. They have been vocal about their interest in making sure that protection of endangered species does not come at the cost of farm productivity and their ability to earn a living.

The farmers found voice on websites like the Klamath Basin Water Crisis, where they have well-reasoned arguments to make not only about the impact on their own farms (their self-interest), but also about considerations like the bond scheme that is proposed to pay for the decommissioning at taxpayer expense (the common interest). Still, contrast their efforts with those of the Sunrise Powerlink project, where San Diego Gas & Electric - in spite of its own litigation delays and a bizarre last-minute regulator-motivated curveball - did yeoman's work in providing a platform on which to engage third voice stakeholders and from which they could join SDG&E's fight to get their transmission line approved.

The power of the third voices in the Sunrise project is that while they were supporting SDG&E's application, they were doing so FOR THEIR OWN REASONS. SDG&E's website for the Community Alliance for Sunrise Powerlink is evidence of a wide-ranging coalition, from business and agriculture groups to local chambers of commerce and human service agencies. Sunrise is still facing hurdles, but it will not be beaten into submission with a coalition like this on board. Too many people now have too much skin in the game. And that is the value of engaging third voices. Your fight becomes their cause. And, many of these groups need causes to keep them active, relevant, and funded.

Back to NorCal and the Beaver State, mitigation of the dams' local impacts would have been costly and - it must be conceded - might not have been 100% effective. But, instead of leveraging enough non-partisan support to force engagement, PacificCorp fell victim to local opponents who went nuclear. Had they been able to build stronger partnerships with a farming community that was invested, organized and motivated for their own cause, they might have found a workable compromise. It might have meant that they had to surrender some of their positions - even to their partners - but, in the long run, it would have been to their advantage.

COMMENT:

This is a typical western states water use issue being masqueraded as a renewable energy issue. How can a fish or snail or small wetland be more important than the family farms that depend on the diverted water and low cost electricity? It works with the right audience. If the environmental impact of dams, reservoirs and irrigation is as trivial as the author implies, the real nuclear option of additional nuclear power plants is the only low-carbon way to save the dams. Wind and solar will chip away at base load, over time.
Should all dams be saved? Many dams in the USA will remove themselves through failure over the next 50 years, posing serious downstream danger. Nature inevitably corrects stream flow blockages. Deserts were not intended to be irrigated farms. Drought will inevitably win. We are fighting the technical fight to subdue the planet, and losing everywhere. We can not possibly afford the cost of winning. We can afford to adapt to dramatic change.

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