Minnesota

Show Date: Thursday, April 10
Show Location: St. Olaf College
City: Northfield, MN
Guest Speaker: no
Issues of focus: XCEL Corporation, Prairie Island nuclear waste, LaCrosse Incinerator

Summary
We began and ended the tour looking at XCEL Corporation as a blatant example of corporate energy injustice.

• XCEL operates twin nuclear power plants on Prairie Island and a nuclear waste dump just blocks from the tribal community. The cancer death risk of the Prairie Island Mdewakanton Dakota Indian community is 6 times higher than the state of Minnesota's. The state legislature gave XCEL 17 casks for nuclear waste in 1994 (they asked for 48). Now, they are coming back to forge a deal with the tribe and the state for additional casks, threaten closure of the plant if they don't get more storage space.
• XCEL is the single largest purchaser of power from Manitoba Hydro, a company that has flooded over 3 million acres of Cree land in Canada.
• XCEL's incinerators are one of the top ten sources of dioxin to be found in breast milk of Native women in the Arctic. XCEL's incinerators have contaminated Native land-and are a principle source of dioxin in the breast milk of Inuit mothers (out of a total of 44,000 sources).

The issue of the XCEL Corporation and its bad energy policies intimately links the state of Minnesota and its Native communities to the states of Nevada and Utah and the Native communities living there. And then, there is a potential resolution that would link these communities to the Native communities in the Great Plains. We are all related. Read on to understand why . . .

The XCEL Corporation's proposal to put the utility's nuclear waste (as well as national nuclear waste) at Yucca Mountain (Nevada) or on the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation (Utah) is in contrast to the potential for renewable energy and energy justice. In the exact same region, over 350 gigawatts of wind power is ready to come on line, and into the grid, and would provide clean, renewable power, and move our communities from centralized power production to democratized power production.

The XCEL Energy Corporation has gone to the Minnesota legislature to request more nuclear waste storage room on Prairie Island Mdewakanton Dakota Reservation. In l994, the Minnesota legislature approved compromise legislation, which set the state on a path for the orderly and responsible transition from nuclear power to renewable energy sources like wind and biomass. The Buffalo Ridge wind project in Southern Minnesota came out of a 1994 battle in the MN legislature, which authorized XCEL to store nuclear waste at Prairie Island, but also required an investment in wind power development. The compromise gave the XCEL Corporation l7 nuclear waste casks, or the equivalent of ten years of storage, the year 2002 was considered the "drop dead date" for both the XCEL Corporation and the citizens of the community, including the Prairie Island Mdewakanton Dakota on whose land the nuclear reactor is located.

For the past decade, XCEL has worked to move nuclear waste - both through aggressive lobbying for the creation of the National Nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain and the creation of alternative sites in other Native communities (beginning with the Mescalero Apache and continuing with the Skull Valley Goshute). XCEL created the Private Fuel Storage Corporation to negotiate on behalf of a group of nuclear utilities for nuclear waste storage space on the Skull Valley Reservation and between l997 and 2002, spent $l.2 million on hiring Jim McClure, a lobbyist and former Idaho Senator who wrote the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of l982) to push for the option of disposing of nuclear waste on the Skull Valley Reservation, in opposition to the community. Earlier this Spring, the Atomic Safety Licensing Board ruled that the Skull Valley site was too dangerous for nuclear waste disposal, based on the possibility of F-l5 fighters from the nearby Hill Airforce Base, either crashing, or mistakenly dropping a bomb or missile on the nuclear waste site.

XCEL went back to the Minnesota legislature this spring, and also went to the Prairie Island Mdewakanton Dakota requesting more nuclear waste storage, and promising the Prairie Island Mdewakanton Dakota both monetary compensation, health studies, and money for land to be put into trust. And, right now, XCEL and the state of Minnesota are considering up to 5 new fossil fuel based power plants in the state to meet projected energy needs. That is power that comes from coal, methane, or other fuels, which, by and large ravage western Native communities. And that is power that contaminates our water, our lakes, our air and our breast milk. Then there is the problem of the dam projects in Manitoba: flooding communities and transforming entire ecosystems and cultures of politically isolated communities of Cree people like the Pimicikamak Cree Nation.

Honor the Earth is committed to an alternative energy future, and believes that the XCEL Corporation has an excellent opportunity to make that change and move towards energy justice.

23 tribes in the Great Plains have wind energy potential which is in the range of 300 plus gigawatts of electrical power. Present installed US capacity is at 600 gigawatts of electrical power. So, in the words of Bob Gough, Secretary of the Intertribal Council On Utility Policy, "we can either give you mercury, coal, and carbon emissions or we can give you wind power."

Click on South Dakota to learn about the Rosebud Wind Turbine project . . .

Action Cards
Andy Sulkko Action Card
Prairie Island Action Card
Senator Coleman Action Card