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BRATTLEBORO -- The power companies say they've done everything within reason to include the public. But some landowners and town leaders want to know why they weren't involved in the process.
"The problem is everyone uses the word 'public' like it's one thing," said Windham Regional Commission executive director Jim Matteau.
In fact, he said, there are multiple publics -- and no practical way to involve everybody in the process.
A set of recently proposed electric transmission upgrades in southern Vermont will have a lasting effect on the region for decades to come. The $200 million project led by Vermont Electric Power Co. and Central Vermont Public Service could solve problems caused by a growing demand for electricity and a limited infrastructure through which the power flows.
"In this case, it's a situation with such big stakes, you want to get it right and you want to get everybody involved,"
Spokesmen for VELCO and CVPS say nearly two years of public meetings, community working groups and open houses ensured not only that the public knew about the project, but was able to shape it from the very start.
"In any process there are going to be people who are less than 100 percent satisfied. In this case, what the utilities have done is completely unprecedented in bringing in as many residents' point of view into the process," said CVPS spokesman Steve Costello.
"This process is light-years away from how utilities in the past have done things in Vermont," he said.
To facilitate public outreach, the power companies brought in Chris Kenny, vice president of STAR Group Consulting.
"What our process is designed to do is to enable the community to be co-creators, if you will, of the recommended solutions," Kenny said. "The public quite often has a different view (than power companies), so this process is designed to get community leaders involved in giving what ultimately are non-binding recommendations."
Starting in late 2005, Kenny reached out to state legislators, ski and power industry leaders and regional planning officials to form a "leadership team" charged with defining the electricity problem and choosing community members who could tackle it.
The leadership team came up with over a hundred people -- all of whom were invited to a January 2006 conference and were asked to provide the names of additional community members.
A separate group made up of Vermont engineers, land-use specialists and other local experts were asked to contribute to a background report to be distributed to attendees of the two-day conference.
Out of the conference came several broad recommendations, such as focusing on energy efficiency and localized generation, as well as building a new synchronous condenser in the Stratton area.
Attendees were invited to join a "community working group," which included close to 30 community leaders from towns along the East-West line -- a 66-mile transmission corridor that runs from Brattleboro to Bennington. The group met throughout the spring and summer to narrow down options presented at the conference and to turn them into a coherent set of solutions.
When VELCO's and CVPS' focus shifted to the Coolidge Connector, a 51-mile line that stretches from Vernon to Cavendish, Kenny formed a "Coolidge community working group," consisting of leaders from towns along that corridor.
The companies held open houses throughout this period to present the groups' progress and solicit feedback. The combined work product, Kenny said, resulted in the proposed Southern Loop upgrade project.
Stephen Wark, spokesman for the Department of Public Service, which acts as an advocate for the public during the regulatory approval process, attended many of these meetings as an observer. He said the companies took the groups' recommendations seriously.
"I don't think it was just window dressing," he said. "Utilities have an obligation under the law to serve. They have a duty to serve."
"This, I think, is a really good example of private organizations reaching out to stakeholders and trying to keep them informed about what's going on," he said.
But not everybody feels that way.
A group of Dummerston residents who live along the path of a new transmission line proposed as part of the Southern Loop project say they, too, are stakeholders. At a Dummerston Planning Commission meeting Tuesday, the landowners questioned why they weren't notified earlier.
"None of the people who were at that meeting had any clear information about it," said Planning Commission chairman Stephan Mindel. "Nobody else was contacted. Certainly the planning commission wasn't."
But according to VELCO spokesman Kerrick Johnson, the utilities did, in fact, reach out to the town. He said he spoke twice last winter to Cindy Jerome, who was chairwoman of the selectboard at the time, inviting her and fellow board members to attend a meeting to discuss the Coolidge Connector.
Jerome said that while she does not specifically remember the conversations, it's possible they happened.
"We get a bazillion letters and e-mails and so forth about all kinds of things," she said. "I don't recall that there were any details that made us sit up and take notice, because none of us cleared our schedule to go to this meeting. If we had known what they had planned, we probably would have."
Eric Stevens, a Windham Regional Commissioner from Grafton, served on the original community working group. He said the utilities did their best to spread the word, and town selectboards could have done more.
"I don't see this as a case of the utilities not wanting to get public input. They went out of their way on this," Stevens said. "All this got out there to various jurisdictions crossed by the line. And I didn't see very much response coming back. If somebody's saying 'why are they doing this to me now, why didn't they do this earlier?' I think they should be saying 'why didn't I pay attention to the selectboard?'"
Former Brattleboro Selectboard member Greg Worden, who served on the community working group with current board chairwoman Audrey Garfield, said the Brattleboro board, at least, tried to get word out.
"We both mentioned numerous times during selectboard meetings that the process was going on and encouraged people to attend," he said. "Did (the utilities) make a good faith effort to let people know? I think they probably did -- as much as they could. They didn't go knocking door to door."
Mindel, however, feels that's exactly what VELCO and CVPS should have done.
"If it's somebody's property that you're basically about to render useless, I think you go directly to the property owner," he said. "We haven't seen any evidence of a year and a half of community outreach. We just haven't seen it."
According to Johnson, VELCO and CVPS did far more than the law requires -- and far more than utilities generally do.
"I can understand that individual landowners would want as much notice as possible," Johnson said. Is there additional outreach we could have done? No question. But we also have to be mindful that we don't put the cart before the horse."
"We can't contact people before we know what the solution is -- what, in fact, the project is going to look like," he said.
Matteau, who participated in the leadership committee, believes the power companies are, at the very least, headed in the right direction.
"I think they're genuinely trying to have this be a much better process than utility projects tend to be. But we're not there yet. At the same time, I don't think the people asking questions at the local level are being NIMBY," he said. "I'm not saying, at the end of the day, one is right and one is wrong."
The next and final article in this series will address the regulatory hurdles between the proposal and its approval.
Paul Heintz can be reached at pheintz@reformer.com or 802-254-2311, ext. 275.
