Alachua Voter Guide

INFORMATION SUPPRESSION, DISINFORMATION, THREAT AND ATTACK

Mark van Soestbergen writes in The Gainesville sun this morning that, from his perspective, “It was nice to see the GRU response over the weekend regarding biomass financials.”

The so-called “biomass financials” response of which Mr. Soestbergen is so enamored is a reference to two letters authored by two highly-paid GRU officials in the January 8 letters-to-the-editor section of The Sun.

These letters – written presumably during work hours and therefore funded by the very ratepayers GRU officials have been attempting to silence – were signed by GRU Assistant General Manager Kathy E. Viehe and GRU Marketing and Communications Manager J. Lewis Walton.

Ms. Viehe and Mr. Walton are part of a vanguard of top GRU officials – many of them being paid more than $100,000 per year, and at least one them being paid more than $200,000 per year – who have been unleashed upon GRU ratepayers in an orchestrated campaign of information suppression, disinformation, threat and attack.

The efforts by Ms. Viehe, Mr. Walton and other GRU officials – efforts sanctioned and applauded by Mayor Craig Lowe and Regional Utilities Committee Chair Commissioner Susan Bottcher and a few other GRU-GREC-biomass-deal-at-any-cost-hide-the-ball city officials – have recently included official jail threats against three senior citizens and a young African American man who have been fostering a welcome dialogue with and providing a voice to hundreds of beleaguered GRU ratepayers wanting a forum in which to express their opposition to the coming GRU-GREC biomass electric rate hikes.

Hear some of their voices, which GRU officials and collaborators on the city commission have been trying so desperately to suppress:

http://saive.com/STEVEN.html

http://saive.com/TRESIA.html

http://saive.com/ELOISE.html

http://saive.com/LORENE.html

http://saive.com/JACQUELINE.html

http://saive.com/YOLANDA.html

Ms. Viehe – whose views are apparently identical with those of Mayor Lowe, Commissioner Bottcher and their allies on the city commission who support and applaud GRU’s threats to have Gainesville citizens jailed for expressing their First Amendment free speech and peaceable assembly rights – wrote in her ratepayer-funded Sun letter-to-the-editor that GRU is justified in summoning GPD police officers “when someone becomes disruptive,” as GRU officials define “disruptive.”

Mr. Walton – whose views are also apparently identical to those of Mayor Lowe, Commissioner Bottcher and their allies on the city commission, and whose views Mr. van Soestbergen applauds – used his ratepayer-funded Sun letter-to-the-editor to attempt to call into question the credibility of one of the senior citizens GRU has threatened with jail and who dares to declare that irregularly negotiated GRU-GREC biomass deal is “a tremendous wealth transfer to an out-of-state company, at the expense of ratepayers.”

Wrote Mr. Walton, in rebuttal: “Nothing could be further from the truth that there is a wealth transfer out of state with biomass. Currently GRU sends millions of dollars out of state to buy coal and natural gas.”

Mr. Walton’s letter is misleading, and, presumably intended to mislead, with the complete approval of GRU’s top brass and the majority of the members of the Gainesville City Commission. What Mr. Walton fails to explain is that even if the $3-billion-to-$4-billion-GRU-GREC-biomass deal were allowed to proceed – and I am pledged if elected to the Gainesville City Commission to do all within my power to assure that it does not proceed – GRU according to its own published 10-year plan will not as a result reduce by a single ounce its imports of coal. Far from replacing coal burning, the biomass plant, according to GRU’s ten-year plans, will be used to sell power to the City of Alachua, Clay Electric and others at rates far lower than GRU intends to charges Gainesville area customers.

Now on the heels of Mr. Walton’s ratepayer-funded obfuscation comes GRU-GREC-biomass-deal-at-any-cost fellow traveler Mr. van Soestberger who claims, falsely, that “for every dollar it costs GRU to provide electricity, 70 cents goes to fuel,” and that “70 cents not only goes out of state, it ends up in the coffers of giant conglomerates that, in turn, have hedge funds and global investors as their shareholders.”

On October 10, 2011 GRU executives at public meeting admitted that under a best-case scenario the GRU-GREC biomass electricity purchase for the first full year of operation would result in GRU having to pay the out of state limited liability company GREC a $103 million, of which only $28 million would be paid out by GREC for fuel, in this case parts of trees to be burned in the GREC electricity-generating biomass incinerator.

Unless Mr. van Soesterberger has been trained in the sort of voodoo math used by carbon accounting charlatans – and I have no evidence that he has been – he accepts the same math rules that the rest of us accept. Under those rules ($28 million is what percentage of $103 million?) only 27 cents – not 70 cents – of every dollar spent on biomass fuel would go to the purchase the trees and parts of trees that make up virtually all of the biomass fuel the GREC incinerator would burn.

Assuming Mr. van Soesterberger accepts the same math rules that the rest of us accept, the question becomes where, in the case of the GRU-GREC biomass contract, where would the 27 cents of every dollar GRU ratepayers pay to GREC for trees and parts of trees actually end up?

We know – from public testimony given by GRU Assistant General Manager Ed Regan – that 30 percent of the cost of harvesting, gathering, processing and transporting trees and parts of trees to the GREC incinerator will be expended for diesel fuel used to power the harvesting and gathering equipment, processing equipment and 25 ton trucks that would make the 100,000 trips to and from the GREC incinerator each year. Using GRU executives’ own representations, and using the math rules we all accept, we know that of the 27 cents of every dollar GRU customers would pay for biomass fuel, 8.1 percent would go to diesel fuel and 18.9 percent would go to those who would sell trees and parts of trees to GREC to be burned in the biomass incinerator.

Who are these tree and tree part providers who will receive the $19.5 million (18.9 percent of the $103 million GRU customers will have to pay for “biomass fuel”)?

We know from news releases and public statements by GRU executives that the largest category of wood and wood parts to be burned in the incinerator will come from trees and parts of trees cut down and out during forest harvesting and forest thinning operations. The only forest harvesting contract that has been announced has been a contract with the multi-national Real Estate Investment Trust Rayonier Corporation, whose forest holdings include about 200,000 acres between of land that the Rayonier multi-national intends to convert to real estate development, most of which real estate development land falls within the GREC “catchment” area from which almost all of the tree and parts of trees to be burned in the GREC incinerator will be gathered. We also know from Rayonier’s SEC filings that less than 1 percent of Rayonier’s land holdings are in Alachua County.

We don’t know the exact terms of the Rayonier contract to sell trees and parts of trees to GREC because, according to GRU executives, the contract between Rayonier and GREC is a “trade secret” that even GRU and city officials have never seen the GREC-Rayonier contract. But we do know that whatever the terms of the GREC-Rayonier contract, only a small percentage of the money GRU ratepayer money handed over to GREC will go to the purchase of fuel from Alachua County suppliers because (1) there are no oil wells in Alachua County and no diesel fuel refining facilities in Alachua County; and (2) more than 99 percent of Rayonier’s lands are outside of Alachua County.

Where does that leave us? Not with exact numbers, which GRU executives and their aiders and abettors on the city commission see no reason for the public to have this information.

But it leaves us with an understanding of why GRU executives and their aiders and abettors on the city commission never purport to represent how much economic benefit the GRU-GREC biomass deal would allegedly provide to Gainesville and Alachua County, but, instead, insist on telling us vaguely that there will be economic benefits to the “area,” which, given the extent of the “area” from which GREC expects to gather trees and parts of trees for incineration, includes south Georgia and 23 Florida counties other than Alachua County.

The game is almost up for GRU executives, their supporters on the city commission, and their ever-diminishing handful of cohorts off the commission, such as Mr. van Soesterberger and the usual suspects on the GRU-GREC-deal-at-any-cost rapid response team.

But don’t expect them to go quietly. Watch this space for the usual suspects rapid-response team to swoop down with ever more desperate threats and attacks. Watch what happens in waning days of the Gainesville City Commission election as the end game nears. If that watch becomes too depressing, feel free to go to my website to keep up with the efforts of brave Gainesville citizens who are unafraid to speak truth to power and support my campaign to change the City Commission majority and rescue our community from the corrupting influence of the GRU-GREC contract.

Go to — www.voteraywashington.com.

And go to the polls on January 31, and encourage your friends and family to go to the polls. Let your voice be heard!