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PUC Candidates Field Wildly Biased Coal Question at State Fair Debate

Last updated on 2012.09.05

Hey, look at that! Public Utilities Commission candidate Nick Nemec posted the complete video of last Saturday's State Fair PUC candidates' debate in Huron, South Dakota:

Now the South Dakota Farmers Union hosted this debate, so according to Rep. Kristi Noem, who inexcusably rejected their invitation to debate the issues with Democratic House candidate Matt Varilek earlier in the day, the event should have been rife with unfair, partisan questions.

Sure enough—check out the first question of the debate at 16:35:

What will you do as PUC Commissioner to throttle back EPA regulations on coal which has [sic] stifled energy production at South Dakota plants?

Holy cow! Who let the Otter Tail execs in to write that question?

Democrat Nemec doesn't take the "Burn everything!" bait. He says coal is on the way out, not because of EPA regulations, but because of market realities. Nemec refers to the "glut of natural gas" from North Dakota and elsewhere that is driving construction of cleaner, more efficient, more responsive gas-fired plants. He says that instead of propping up a declining coal industry, we should promote cleaner, safer forms of energy for South Dakota consumers and landowners.

Nemec's opponent, Republican sitting commissioner Chris Nelson, turns right back to the GOP saws about that darned Barack Obama promising to use bankrupt the coal industry with EPA regulations. Nelson admits that the primary threat, greenhouse gas regulations, don't exist (yet... and now Chris has me wondering if he'd have spent his time in Congress chasing imaginary regulations just like the woman who beat him for the job in the June 2010 primary). But he notes that consumers are paying for expensive pollution control measures at the coal plants that power South Dakota... and then time runs out before he can tell us what specifically he'll do to stop EPA regs. Watch that clock, Chris!

On the other side of the stage, Libertarian Russell Clarke, who's made the tussle between Democrat Matt McGovern and incumbent GOP appointee Kristie Fiegen, says Libertarians want less government. No duh. But this Libertarian is thinking: he says we have to do something to stop environmental destruction, and he recognizes the courts have to step in when the free market fails to make polluters pay for their damage. He says he'd work to push the regulations back, but he says he'd also ask the voters to tell him what they think of these regulations. In other words, Clarke confused both the people who know what Libertarians and those who don't.

Commissioner Fiegen said that protecting the pocketbooks of farmers and ranchers and families comes first. She says a dealer told her that the EPA is making combines more expensive. She said we have to include renewables in our portfolio, but that on a hot day last June, renewables were able to provide only 7% of the demand. Use lots of domestic energy, says Fiegen, and protect those pocketbooks!

McGovern says he doesn't agree with everything the EPA does, like its "heavy-handed" use of drone aircraft to identify environmental violations on feedlots (what? Come on, Matt, we gotta find that poop!). But then he cites Republican Public Utilities Commissioner Gary Hanson as saying that the EPA's mercury regs were long overdue. He says he checked the coal industry website and found coal provides just 22% of South Dakota's power. He points to a new Basin Electric natural gas plant in Brookings County that will help us take advantage of those cheap gas prices and reliably supplement our wind energy generation.

And then McGovern crushes the question:

...The commissioners... are not members of Congress, they're not Senators, they're not the President. They really need to focus on what we can do in Pierre to help consumers and farmers, because when they get caught up too much in what's going on in Washington, D.C., it means that they're taking their eye off the ball and not looking out for consumers and farmers in South Dakota.

That's good advice for all South Dakota candidates: get off the EPA/ObamaCare bogeymen and focus on the practical local policymaking where you can make a real and immediate difference in South Dakota's well-being.

24 Comments

  1. Justin 2012.09.06

    Clarke sounds like he may have actually studied a bit of economics, I like his answer.

    I'd like to see Noem and Fiegen play Jeopardy against each other to see if either could come away with a positive score.

  2. Charlie Hoffman 2012.09.06

    Personally I think it was a great question Cory. We speak of jobs and jobs and more jobs yet what happens in many industries is either a loss of jobs because of convoluted regulations or the forcing of production changes overbearing to the merit of end profit needed to stay in business. What is quite scary though is the seemingly roundabout way in which the Executive office can use the EPA to further their personal agenda without having to go through the normal political debate process before enacting rules governing private business.

    The debate on just how much blue sky we can see in North and South Dakota would be an honorable one to have on the US Senate floor with documentation bearing that the scrubbers in place today on our coal fired electric plants are doing a great job of keeping that skyline pure. The outrageous costs of going further are meant only to punish those plants for producing electricity with coal. That demonization of the coal industry is what has many of us up in arms against the EPA and those who use it to promote their personal agenda.

  3. caheidelberger Post author | 2012.09.06

    Justin: add Sean Connery to that Jeopardy round, and you've got comedic gold. As for Clarke, you probably have the "bit" of economics right. Libertarians study just enough economics (usually the warped Austrian flavor) to sound intelligent, when really they're just playing with shibboleths and advocating impractical or destructive policies.

  4. caheidelberger Post author | 2012.09.06

    Coal has externalities; there's no reason those who use coal shouldn't pay for the damage they cause. Coal is dirtiest way you can get electricity. Heck, we even get more radioactive emissions from coal plants than from nuclear plants.

    But Nick doesn't speak as if he's grinding some personal axe; he's just talking market realities. Besides, it's the PUC's job to regulate utilities, not help the industry get out from under federal regulations, isn't it?

  5. larry kurtz 2012.09.06

    Matt needs to start talking about in situ gasification. As soon as EPA drafts new rules about cross-state pollution Big Stone will become a zombie rather than merely a dinosaur.

  6. Justin 2012.09.06

    I've got no problem with demonizing clean water legislation as long as I can come over and drop a deuce in Kristi Fiegen's drinking water any time I want and pour Roundup in her milk. I won't say how, but I make a lot of money doing those things, she would be a hypocrite to complain.

  7. Dougal 2012.09.06

    Fiegen is in way over her head, despite being on the Xcel board. She's a shill for the big power corporations and damn poor choice on what should be a consumer protection commission.

  8. Justin 2012.09.06

    I'm not sure Nelson is any better, which is sad. He thinks he's running for Congress. This job isn't about making law, and it certainly shouldn't be about ignoring law.

  9. Dougal 2012.09.06

    Chris Nelson is another desk shuffler in our State Capitol. Voters elected Dusty Johnson last election, and Johnson dumped the job for a better paying gig in the governor's office. Nelson didn't have a job, so they shuffled his desk downstairs to the PUC office, thanks to a political appointment.

    These GOP desk shufflers think of government as a career path. Being term limited only means another government office is going to open up and you can shuffle your desk from School & Public Lands upstairs to the Treasurer's office or the Auditor's office, or down the hall and around the corner to the PUC. It's a slow moving game of Whack-a-Mole.

    The Democrats do a lousy job of running for these offices, and the voter has no clue who the candidates are because they don't pay attention to them. They blindly elect Republicans out of the false notion they'll act like conservatives in office. The truth is they are not conservatives, but professional desk shufflers who enact one record-breaking budget after the other.

    One of these days, people might wake up to the professional desk shufflers in Pierre who campaign against government expansion but spend our taxes like drunken sailors. Voters can start by making political appointees Nelson and Fiegen an example to the other desk shufflers who hold elected office. Their presence in Pierre should be all about public service, not a guarantee of tax-financed employment until retirement.

  10. Les 2012.09.06

    You nailed it Dougal, the Dems do a damn poor job of running.
    It is like Nick(bless his heart) and Matt Who? woke one morning with the thought to run for the position. And that wasn't too many mornings ago, no knowledge other than a couple of hot button issues anyone could hawk.
    There are many federally regulated issues that require our commission to have an eye on DC and both Fiegen and Nelson have shown us they are up to the task.

  11. Dougal 2012.09.06

    Les, there is still a long time til election day, but so far I'm seeing a lot of Fiegen and Nelson barn signs out there. Yes, I know "signs don't vote," but neither do radio and TV ads. Sadly, signs are a method of building name identification in South Dakota, especially with the over-40 crowd. Matt has an edge being a McGovern with law and wind energy advocacy experience, and Nick is a former legislator and former U.S. Marine officer who has been a longtime advocate of wind energy development in South Dakota. Both are the best people Democrats have run for the PUC since Jim Burg.

    They still have time. They have the best message. They need money and people helping out.

  12. Justin 2012.09.06

    If the task is looking the other way while you pollute the water supply, you are probably right Les.

  13. Les 2012.09.06

    Jim Burg they are not. I've met them and seen them debate, it wasn't pretty? Matt Who?, grandpa he ain't.

  14. Les 2012.09.06

    Dougal, wind continues to be a hot button for SD, we have no infrastructure in place to transport it. The transport will continue to develop where the population exists which is unfortunately not SD.

    I have long been a proponent of small wind, a small tower on every home and ranch.

  15. Dougal 2012.09.06

    I also support small wind, but I also support a much larger scale to energize South Dakota's economy. This is a once-in-a-lifetiime opportunity which can easily slide away from South Dakota if the fossil fuel shills in Pierre and Washington remain in office.

    Cap-and-trade, that great Republican proposal, was debated as a pathway to lead our nation out of its antiquated and dangerous fossil fuel-based economy to a 21st Century clean energy economy. The Waxman-Markey bill, which borrowed the GOP cap-and-trade incentive concept, set the stage for this transition, but the deep pockets of Greedy Coal and Oil won that battle. If it had been passed the Senate, we would be talking about 2 million new jobs to make this transition, including the construction of a nationwide new electric grid to replace the antique system which loses 20 percent of the energy produced. The new grid was South Dakota's ticket to building and hooking up world class-sized wind farms generating tens of thousands of megawatts to light up major metro areas.

    Without it, South Dakota will just sit and watch other states erect these wind farms and other states prosper from the inevitable switch from primary-coal-based electricity to primary-clean-based electricity. Timing is everything. South Dakota is in a big winner position with great prosperity and new jobs for many years, but it won't happen without a new strategy for transmission.

    As with rural electrification, this requires strong leadership from Washington and tireless support from the states that would dramatically benefit. Republicans are on record doing everything they could to help their corporate pals in the private utilities to derail the REA. They are also doing all they can to derail the transition to a clean energy economy, again to keep getting their campaign contributions from fossil fuel-funded pacs and lobbyists. They also don't understand how foolish they look abandonning their cap-and-trade idea to incentivize a clean energy economy when they supported it before Obama became President.

  16. Douglas Wiken 2012.09.06

    Our wind energy needs to be used for heating and cooling, for producing methanol and anhydrous ammonia near the wind generators. The PUC has hammers for powerlines and tends to see wind energy as a power transmission problem.

    The power transmission problem is an opportunity waiting for economic local development in SD. A wind generator and a powerline will employ a relatively small number of people compared to local plants generating fuel and fertilizer.

    Coal is a dreadful fuel. There is enough thorium in the waste ash to run a Thorium-liquid salt reactor for 10 years producing as much energy each year as the coal plants produce in one year.

    Thee can be enough jobs in improving home insulation and in clean energy to rebuild the economy and remove the need for huge military expenditures primarily to protect oil tanker lines.

  17. Les 2012.09.06

    You are right on so many levels Doug.
    Back to the topic though, how long would Nick or any PUC commissioner last in the short term of tripling prices to make this happen in our rural high cost areas? We should have been on this years ago and now have to be on it for years to make it happen, but happen it should.
    Also, much of this talk is DENR regulation though they do have an initiative for public safety which I believe is at a different level.

    As for clean nat gas and it can be, just ask western ND how clean the process is.
    You are right Cory they regulate for the benefit of the consumer and price/competition will dictate until we develop alternatives.

  18. larry kurtz 2012.09.06

    DENR was castrated by Bill Janklow: the earth hater party in South Dakota won't tolerate anything getting in the way of dollars being funneled into the Governors Club.

  19. Dougal 2012.11.19

    Attention all inmates. Return to your cells and leave control of the asylum to those who know what the hell they are doing. The World Bank has spoken. Climate change is a bigger threat moving faster than originally assumed. If you continue to obstruct clean energy solutions to your dirty fossil fuel laziness, you will destroy our economy and set back all civilization. No kidding. Stop the stupid dance.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/world-bank-warns-of-4-degree-threshhold/2012/11/19/aa298dd0-3023-11e2-a30e-5ca76eeec857_story.html?hpid=z4

  20. Les 2012.11.19

    You would throw in with the group who controls both sides of the aisle. The same group who has stolen our segregated accounts while operating as an investment brokerage when in reality they corner and manipulate markets with stolen assets.

    Clever Dougal, Jekyll or Hyde?

  21. Les 2012.11.20

    How's that Dow been treatin you Larry? Thanks for the link, looks the Teds trying to make up with me with his Hi Les shirt.
    Not gonna happen Hustewed, no matter how hard Larry works at it.

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