Defend the Sacred - No Fracked Gas Plant on Gitchi-Gami

Start: 2023-09-10 19:45:00 UTC Central Daylight Time (US & Canada) (GMT-05:00)

Event Type: Virtual
A virtual link will be communicated before the event.

Host contact info Native Lives Matter Great Lakes


Native Lives Matter Great Lakes
No Fracked Gas Plant on Gitchi-Gami - Defend the Sacred

In solidarity with Indigenous rights and sovereignty, directly threatened by this project, please email comments in solidarity.

* Oppose the Planned Fracked Gas Plant Near Lake Superior

* Tell USDA: Deny Loan for a new Gas Plant on Gitchi-Gami

* Tell USDA: No federal loans for new fossil fuel gas plant


https://www.sierraclub.org/minnesota/blog/2021/09/there-still-time-stop-ntec-fossil-gas-plant

As our shared climate rapidly continues to destabilize, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Rural Utilities Service is still considering Dairyland Power Cooperative’s request for a $350 million public loan and permits to build Nemadji Trail Energy Center (NTEC). Life on Earth cannot afford a large new $700 million gas-fired power plant just off the coast of Gitchi Gami (Lake Superior – so much of our planet's surface freshwater) within 1842 Ceded Territory.

Bennet Goldstein Wisconsin Watch

What began as a bad, environmentally unjust idea in 2017 has become untenable today, given the rapid escalation of climate change. The NTEC proposal has also become absurd in light of billions of dollars in loans the RUS is awarding now under the Inflation Reduction Act for clean energy projects.

As the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) stated in 2022, NTEC’s greenhouse gas emissions would cause an estimated $2 billion in climate damages through 2040. The EPA has also said, “Because methane is both a powerful greenhouse gas and short-lived compared to carbon dioxide, achieving significant reductions would have a rapid and significant effect on atmospheric warming potential.” Meanwhile, the climate crisis is already taking heavy tolls on lands, waters, and traditional lifeways for Indigenous peoples in the Great Lakes region and around the world.

Beyond the planetary heating that demands denying this loan outright, NTEC dismisses numerous other significant threats to Indigenous rights and sovereignty, including:

  • Dismissing the relevant Treaties.

  • Failing to obtain full Free, Prior and Informed Consent.

  • Violating the recently-returned resting places of Anishinaabe people who have already been forcibly displaced by industry.

  • Fueling the epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous People.

  • Further exploiting an area already overburdened with dangerous fossil fuel infrastructure and legacy pollution.

  • Disproportionately harming Tribal lands and people downwind of NTEC.

  • Refusing to conduct a full environmental impact study, despite proximity to the Great Lakes.

Please send an email to USDA today asking them to deny the NTEC loan to Dairyland Power. This was never the place, and now is obviously not the time to build new fossil fuel infrastructure of any kind.


Miigwetch for your help and support

Native Lives Matter Great Lakes - No More MMIWR Great Lakes - No More Pipelines & Fracking


Native Lives Matter Great Lakes
No More MMIWR Great Lakes - www,nomoremmiwr.com



10 September 2023


United States Department of Agriculture

Rural Development/Rural Utilities Service

Submitted via email: NTEC.RSEA@usda.gov

USDA Rural Utilities Service Administrator Andrew Berke Andrew.Berke@usda.gov

USDA Rural Development Tribal Relations Team Lead and Tribal Coordinator Tedd Buelow tedd.buelow@usda.gov


To Whom It May Concern,


As our shared climate rapidly continues to destabilize, it is unconscionable that Dairyland Power Cooperative has not canceled its request for a $350 million public loan and permits to build Nemadji Trail Energy Center (NTEC), a large $700 million gas-fired power plant just off the coast of Gitchi Gami (Lake Superior) within 1842 Ceded Territory. What began as a bad, environmentally unjust idea in 2017 has become untenable today, given the rapid escalation of climate change, while becoming oppositional in light of the billions of dollars in loans the RUS is now awarding under the Inflation Reduction Act for clean energy projects.


We sincerely and strongly request that you deny the loan to Dairyland Power. In short, this location was never the place, and now is obviously not the time, to build new fossil fuel infrastructure of any kind. Indigenous peoples have lived and thrived in the area now called Wisconsin for more than 12,000 years, and must be allowed to recover from existing extraction projects – not burdened with additional ones.


There is no version of physical reality on Mother Earth in which building a new 40-year gas plant to begin operating in 2027 – three years before our greenhouse gas emissions need to be significantly reduced – either serves the public interest or fulfills the public trust doctrine. There is no demonstrated need this project can meet. To even contemplate NTEC in 2023 is to betray U.S. and global scientific consensus, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the International Energy Agency, the United Nations and Paris Agreement, U.S. President Biden’s climate agenda and Justice40 Initiative, Minnesota’s climate action framework and new carbon-free electricity standard, and Wisconsin’s climate commitments.


Separate technical comments being submitted to your office detail errors in the July 2023 Revised Supplemental Environmental Assessment (RSEA) substitution analysis and upstream fracked methane leakage calculations, explanation of the need for a full Environmental Impact Study, as well as debunking of the absurd justification that NTEC would be carbon negative, or even neutral, for the region. As the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) stated in 2022 comments to the Supplemental Environmental Assessment, NTEC’s greenhouse gas emissions would cause an estimated $2 billion in climate damages through 2040. Meanwhile, the climate crisis is already taking heavy tolls on lands, waters, and traditional lifeways for Indigenous peoples in Wisconsin and around the world.


The NTEC proposal is based on an outdated belief that methane/natural gas could be a good “bridge fuel” to a safe energy future because it emits less carbon dioxide (CO2) than other fossil fuels. It is now widely known that methane is an intense greenhouse gas with a 100-year global warming potential about 30 times that of CO2; measured over a 20-year period, methane has a warming potential about 85 times that of CO2. “Because methane is both a powerful greenhouse gas and short-lived compared to carbon dioxide, achieving significant reductions would have a rapid and significant effect on atmospheric warming potential,” according to the EPA.


A 2021 Harvard health study found the harmful impacts of burning natural gas and biomass had surpassed coal in many states. “While there are public health benefits from reducing coal emissions; gas, biomass, and wood are not clean or healthy alternative energy sources. Swapping one polluting fuel source for another is not a pathway to a healthy energy system. Wind, solar, and other non-fuel combusting renewable energy are the healthiest energy sources available for generating electricity, powering our factories, and heating our homes.”


NTEC construction is proposed in an area already overburdened with dangerous fossil fuel infrastructure. In recent weeks alone, there was a significant propane leak and heavy fuel oil release at the Cenovus Superior Refinery, reigniting safety violations after a massive explosion and fire destroyed parts of the plant in 2018.


The proposed gas plant would be built along the Nemadji River, a tributary of Lake Superior that has already suffered significant pollution. Following a 1992 train derailment and hazmat spill, in 2003 a pipeline rupture spilled at least 100,000 gallons of crude oil at Enbridge Energy Terminal – only two miles from Lake Superior – and nearly 19,000 gallons dumped onto the frozen Nemadji River.


The plant would be close to the precious, priceless Gitchi Gami (Lake Superior). The Great Lakes hold one-fifth of the planet's surface freshwater. Water scarcity and water security issues are rising in tandem with climate chaos and pollution damage. This irreplaceable region, essential for fish and wildlife habitats, historic and cultural resources, as well as recreation, is no place for fossil fuel infrastructure.


The 26-acre NTEC facility would also be situated near the St. Francis Cemetery. As acknowledged in the NTEC Supplemental Environmental Assessment, "Of the six recognized bands of Ojibwe with connections to the region, the Fond Du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa maintained a special association with the Project vicinity.”


In 1918 or 1919, approximately 180 deceased members of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa were disinterred, without their descendants’ consent, from their burial grounds dating from the 17th century near the end of Wisconsin Point in Superior on the western edge of Lake Superior, and reburied in a mass grave at the St. Francis Xavier Cemetery on the Superior mainland. Minnesota Steel, a subsidiary of U.S. Steel, took this action to make way for an ore dock and rail terminal. The dock and terminal were never built. Among the exhumed was Chief Joseph Headman Ozaagii, who signed two major treaties with the U.S. government in the mid-1800s.


On August 19, 2022, after decades of Ojibwe people fighting to have this land returned and with support from Superior City Council President Jenny Van Sickle, Superior Mayor Jim Paine signed over deeds returning two pieces of land to the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa – one at the site of the burial ground on Wisconsin Point, the other at the St. Francis Cemetery mass grave site – adding to 13 acres the federal government returned to the Band at the end of Wisconsin Point five years prior.


“This might be an opportunity that we have the ability to start our healing process,” said Fond du Lac Tribal Chairman Kevin DuPuis at the signing of the deeds. "Most importantly,” he added, “I think the biggest thing is just simple protection of [the land]. Just simple protection.”


“I think it's the most important thing I've ever done,” said Mayor Paine. Department of the Interior Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland noted, “The Fond du Lac people here are in the best position to care for this very special place.” The land return was also attended by Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers, and U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin.


The proposal to build NTEC adjacent to St. Francis Cemetery is a proposal to unravel this step toward justice and healing, once again disregarding the Band’s rights and ancestors. The RSEA fails to do adequate analysis of potential short- and long-term impacts of construction and operation on this historically complex location, particularly in light of designated Federal Laws and Acts Protecting Burial Sites: the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, as amended 2000, and Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of November 16, 1990.


Moreover, NTEC construction – promising hundreds of short-term jobs and the man camps these bring – would be statistically destined to increase the associated threat of human trafficking and contribute to the epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous People. “Violent crimes against Indigenous communities around extractive industry projects have increased with the establishment of man camps while the current legal systems leave Indigenous communities vulnerable against this clear threat. Both the United States and Canada have endorsed international declarations of Indigenous rights, agreeing to protect Indigenous communities from violence, yet the MMIW Crisis in both countries continues.”


In addition to minimizing the reality of MMIW threats, the RSEA's Environmental Justice analysis remains fully inadequate in other areas. Most egregiously, it remains silent on the inevitable air pollution impacts on Tribal areas downwind of NTEC.

The RSEA remains silent despite, for example, the Nemadji Trail Energy Center Health and Equity Analysis provided during the SEA comment process in July 2022 – a full year prior to release of the RSEA – by PSE Healthy Energy, with a section specifically devoted to the Spatial Distribution of NTEC Health Impacts. The analysis details populations living near the proposed facility site and calculates the particulate matter-related public health impacts of NTEC associated with planned operation from 2025-2040. This work has been done and once again has been left out of the RSEA.

The glaring omission of any discussion of the air pollution impacts of a new gas plant on Tribal lands and people downwind provides a case study in environmental injustice, again flying in the face of President Biden’s Justice40 Initiative, while blithely ignoring research showing that burning fossil fuels is causing nearly one in five of all deaths worldwide. Regions with the worst air pollution have the highest rates of mortality, and mortality rates are higher among people who suffer long-term exposure to fossil-fuel emissions, even at comparatively low levels.

“We can’t in good conscience continue to rely on fossil fuels, when we know that there are such severe effects on health and viable, cleaner alternatives,” said Professor Eloise Marais of University College, London, one of the report’s authors.

Recognizing national, regional and state commitments to environmental justice, NTEC’s disproportionate harm to environmental justice communities must be addressed. Needed steps include a sincere and full Environmental Impact Study as well as a full Free, Prior and Informed Consent process.

The RSEA fails to meet the need, well recognized in the 21st century, for full Indigenous consent for new projects. The federal government has a trust responsibility to tribes, and US Constitution Article Six recognizes treaties as the supreme law of the land. Wisconsin’s Special Committee on State-Tribal Relations created legislation on the protection of human burial sites.

Free, Prior and Informed Consent, as outlined in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, includes per Article 32:  

1. Indigenous peoples have the right to determine and develop priorities and strategies for the development or use of their lands or territories and other resources.

2. States shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the indigenous peoples concerned through their own representative institutions in order to obtain their free and informed consent prior to the approval of any project affecting their lands or territories and other resources, particularly in connection with the development, utilization or exploitation of mineral, water or other resources.

3. States shall provide effective mechanisms for just and fair redress for any such activities, and appropriate measures shall be taken to mitigate adverse environmental, economic, social, cultural or spiritual impact.

A recent example of an authentic consultation process was the USDA Forest Service – Superior National Forest’s consideration of the 495-acre Lutsen Ski Hill Proposed Expansion Area, which included an Environmental Impact Statement. The draft decision, issued August 25, 2023, based on findings through the National Environmental Policy Act process and Tribal consultation, upheld usufructuary rights under the Treaty of 1854.

Throughout the Great Lakes Region (ie, threat of PFAS to treaty rights, hunting and fishing treaty rights upheld, treaty rights recognized on Line 5) and coast to coast, from the 1974 Boldt decision to last month’s Lutsen decision, treaty rights continue to gain public and legal traction.

On April 9, 2019, Wisconsin Governor Evers issued Executive Order #18 affirming the sovereignty of the 11 federally recognized tribal governments in Wisconsin and the government-to-government relationship that exists between the State and the Tribes. This elaborated and built upon Executive Order #39 of 2004, which established the State-Tribal Consultation Initiative. The NTEC proposal violates both orders.

For all these reasons and more, we urge you to deny this loan and turn your full attention and resources toward a just transition with full Indigenous and community consent and full environmental impact studies. We would welcome a meeting for further discussion and opportunities to work together with your agency to pursue utilities that serve public, treaty, and environmental needs.

Sincerely,

Rene Ann Goodrich, Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Tribal Elder, Native Lives Matter Great Lakes, MMIW Department of Justice Task Force Member Wisconsin, Indigenous Women's Treaty Alliance Member

Gwendolyn Topping, Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Tribal Member, MMIW Department of Justice Task Force Member Wisconsin, Jingle Dress Dancer and Water Walker

Victoria McMillen, Migizikwe, Migizi Eagle Clan, 1st Descendant Nagajiiwanaang Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, wife and mother to band members, Advocate, Cultural Preservation Consultant and Educator, Waadookawaad Amikwag Volunteer

Carrie Huff Chesnik, MA, Oneida Nation Wisconsin Tribal Elder, Mashkikiike founder, Indigenous Women's Treaty Alliance Member

Gaagigeyaashiik Dawn Goodwin, White Earth Tribal Member, Indigenous Environmental Network Representative, Resilient Indigenous Sisters Engaging (R.I.S.E.) Coalition Co-Founder, Indigenous Women's Treaty Alliance Member

Jannan J. Cornstalk, Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, Water is Life Festival Director, Petoskey, Indigenous Women's Treaty Alliance Member


Bennet Goldstein Wisconsin Watch, published on PBS Wisconsin


cc:

Minnesota Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan peggy.flanagan@state.mn.us






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