Letters Feb 21, 2021
Please write on your own or join our letter writing party at 7pm tonight at Zoom:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85643874306?pwd=Tm1yeXJBVVhWMGt5ZjZXVTVYbGFoZz09
1. Hatchery road solar project.
If you didn’t write a letter to the Planning Commission in support of this project already do it now. All the information you need is at the bottom of this email.
2. World beyond war:
Move billions from military to social and environmental needs. Suggested by Diane Ryerson: https://worldbeyondwar.org/california/?
3. New pipeline actions:
From Tara Houska: Back in 2016, I helped to launch #DefundDAPL. As Indigenous Water Protectors were being brutalized by racist, militarized police ― shot with rubber bullets, bitten by attack dogs and blasted with water cannons in the middle of winter ― #DefundDAPL spread nationally.
Protests erupted in cities around the country, close to a dozen city governments committed to breaking ties with the funders of DAPL and nearly $100 million in personal accounts were moved away from the funders of that colonial pipeline.
Now is the time for us to defund the White Supremacist, carbon bomb that is Line 3.
Over the next two months, we’re going to make the financial companies that support Enbridge and its toxic Line 3 pipeline feel the heat. Here’s the plan.
On March 31st, 18 banks have a $2.2 billion loan to Enbridge that is due for renewal. That’s in 51 days. Between now and then, we’re going to do everything in our power to make it loud and clear to the executives of those banks: They must walk away from Line 3 ― or there will be consequences.
Every week, we’re going to ask you to take an action that helps put pressure on those 18 banks funding Line 3. We’ll ask you to send direct emails to CEOs, call board members, take part in Covid-safe street protests, participate in projection actions, join online rallies and much more.
If enough of us take these actions together, we can make the companies funding Line 3 feel enough pressure that they will walk away from Enbridge.
We’re going to start today with one, easy action for you to take. Click here to send the CEOs of 18 major banks a message that they MUST walk away from Enbridge. https://unitedindefenseofthewater.org/2021/02/20/help-defund-line-3-enbridge-loan-due-for-renewal-march-31-2021/
The fracked gas Mountain Valley Pipeline just keeps racking up damages and hazards to our environment and public health — but Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and JP Morgan Chase and other major banks keep funding construction. It’s 3 years behind schedule and $3 billion over budget, has been fined millions of dollars in environmental violations, lacks multiple federal permits and is still nowhere near complete.
Contact the bankers behind the Mountain Valley Pipeline: https://addup.sierraclub.org/campaigns/defund-the-fracked-gas-mountain-valley-pipeline/petition?
4. Sierra Club letters for voter registration (no need to be a Sierra Club member)
This letter writing project will be a little different from previous ones! This is a non-partisan voter registration effort. Even if you’ve written letters with us before, please read our updated letter writing guide here: sc.org/LetterWritingGuide. It has important details about some of the guidelines we need everyone to follow when working on these letters.
We have letter writing opportunities available now! You can sign up for your first batch of 5 letters at sc.org/RequestLetters. Before getting started, please read our letter writing guide at sc.org/LetterWritingGuide.
5. Tongass National Forest
Before leaving office, Trump stripped protections from millions of acres of the largest intact temperate rainforest left in the world: Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. This blatant giveaway to logging companies and other industries is not only an egregious attack on our shared public lands and Alaska’s Indigenous communities who have called the Tongass home for generations, but it is also an attack on our climate. The Tongass’s countless groves of irreplaceable old growth trees store more carbon per acre than almost any other forest on the planet, making it an absolutely critical tool in the fight against climate change. Tell the Biden administration to take swift action to restore protections for Alaska’s Tongass National Forest so that we can save this cherished land from an onslaught of industrial development. Please send your letter now. https://act.nrdc.org/letter/5614-tongass-forest-210217?
6. Flip the west
We are now writing to Wisconsin voters to let them know their Senator, Ron Johnson, urged the Supreme Court to throw out millions of legally cast ballots and overturn a fair election and said that the deadly attack on the US Capitol “didn’t seem like an armed insurrection”. Our send-by deadline for this campaign is March 15th.
• We email you a script for our current target, plus names and addresses (a minimum of 25). You supply your own postcards and stamps. (Click here: http://bit.ly/2K7pkFm, for info on buying postcards and stamps.)
• Please enter the number of names/addresses you want below your contact info. (Enter as a NUMBER, not text).
• Within 48 hours, look for the email address [name]@ftwpostcards.com with your names/addresses. (Don’t forget to check Spam).
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HATCHERY ROAD SOLAR DETAIL
Humboldt County badly needs new local sources of renewable energy. While our electricity company, Redwood Coast Energy Authority (RCEA), can purchase renewable energy from outside the county, the electric line on which it is transmitted is not close to being able to handle our peak demands. In partial response, RCEA has signed contracts for six 1 megawatt solar arrays. The Hatchery Road Solar Project in Blue Lake will provide an additional 4 megawatts of solar energy.
The project needs to be approved by the Humboldt County Planning Commission. The county planning department has recommended approval. But the Planning Commission needs to hear from every person who supports solar power. 350 Humboldt is asking you to please write a letter of support to the Planning Commission. The deadline if February 26, but we urge you to take a few minutes and do it right now!
Your email should be addressed to: [email protected] As “subject” use Hatchery Road Solar Project.
Below is a project description from the Planning Department’s environmental review document. [Available at: https://humboldtgov.org/DocumentCenter/View/92179/RPCA-Hatchery-Road-CEQA-Initial-Study_011121-PDF ]
The project description is followed by a number of talking points, some of which you may want to include in your letter. Thanks to Mary Sanger for compiling these.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION: The project will include a small-scale commercial energy generating facility that would construct a 4 megawatt (MW) solar facility on approximately 25.70 acres. The proposed project includes approximately of 13,664 solar photovoltaic (PV) module arrays, 32 string inverters, and associated electrical conductors and equipment needed to convert sun energy into usable AC power. The project will enhance electrical reliability for the existing Pacific Gas & Electric’s (PG&E’s) grid system. A small drainage though the middle of the property will be avoided by a 150’ setback leaving the remainder of the land area covered by the solar arrays, which will be mounted on a racking system attached to steel piles driven into the ground. Single axis tracking technology will be utilized to allow the modules to efficiently track the sun throughout the day and maximize the efficiency of solar collection. The project proposes ongoing agricultural uses on the property, including but not limited to sheep grazing or the keeping of honey bees, on a rotational basis whereby pasture areas would be occupied for variable periods, allowing pasture rest periods to promote optimal vegetation quality management and maintenance of the project’s pollinator habitat.
HATCHERY ROAD SOLAR: REASONS TO APPROVE THE PROJECT
1. We appreciate that Humboldt County is taking the climate crisis seriously. It is a threat that is global but the solutions often come down to local decisions like promoting renewable energy installations.
2. This project will reduce our dependence on the natural gas fired power plant on Humboldt Bay, reducing the county’s greenhouse gas emissions. The power the project provides will help mitigate the fact that Humboldt County peak power utilization exceeds the capacity of the transmission lines into the County.
3. It will be a move in the right direction to enable the county to achieve the 100% renewable electricity by 2025 that they have committed to. If approved, the project can be operational by July of this year!
4. The general plan designation for the parcels is agricultural and it specifies that renewable electricity installations are allowed. The property will not be converted out of agricultural. The proposal to use the property for bee habitat and or grazing have been used successfully at other solar installations around the world. The Planning Department document (link above) evaluates use of agricultural land for solar in great detail. The decision to approve this project is clearly based on significant and careful consideration. It should be noted that the underlying land, soil condition, or land use are not changed permanently, as they might be with other land use.
5. Most of the jobs in this project are in the construction phase. It would be an economic benefit to the County if those jobs would go to local, living wage contractors.
6. Some comments have suggested aesthetics is a problem. But aesthetics are time-bound and culturally specific. As the Planning Department document says: “Viewer response may be negative for viewers who place a high value on open space, or positive for viewers who place a high value on renewable energy. The limited expanse of the project feature and the limited importance of the affected viewpoints result in the impacts being less than significant.”
7. Under CEQA, possible impacts are significant or not. This project has very few significant impacts and the County agrees that all of them can be mitigated to insignificance. As the Planning Department document summarizes: “The project will not degrade the quality of the environmental, substantially reduce the habitat of a fish or wildlife species, cause a fish or wildlife population to drop below self-sustaining levels, threaten to eliminate a plant or animal community, reduce the number or restrict the range of a rare or endangered plant or animal. Although no special status species were observed on the project site, potential biological impacts related to special status bird species would be reduced to less than significant levels… In the event archaeological artifacts are found [mitigation measures] would reduce potential impacts to less than significant levels… Therefore, impacts would be considered less than significant with mitigation incorporated.“
8. We suggest to the developers that they consider offering a community benefit. For example, the community wants to put in a trail from downtown Blue Lake out to the hatchery and a financial contribution could make that a reality.