FARMERS ON THE LINE
Wasserman, Harvey
Farmers on the line The Minnesota powerline fight may foreshadow a larger struggle Harvey Wasserman The flat, fertile, middle-American farmland of western Minnesota has become a battlefield in...
...But the farmers may have found the system's Achilles heel...
...To me, they're like family...
...A lot of what the so-called city radicals have been saying has been right on the head," says Gloria Woida, a thirty-eight-year-old mother of five...
...The recent nuclear accident at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, has also deepened the Minnesota farmers' opposition to nuclear generators operating at Monticello and Prairie Island...
...Without that transmission channel, there is no future for centralized power generation in the United States — coal, nuclear, or otherwise...
...Farmers argue bitterly that the management of the co-ops has been taken over by urban-based private utilities and is beyond their control...
...We don't know what it can do to us...
...Those cops never knew what hit 'em...
...Many now claim that the lignite coal mined for use at the Underwood generator is laden with enough radium and uranium traces to make it a significant radiation producer, and the farmers don't seem to like it much better than they like the nearby nuclear plants...
...Among the farmers, many who vehemently supported the Vietnam There's two kinds of power — money power and people power' war now welcome scruffy veterans of the anti-war protests into their ranks...
...We've had reports from farmers in Ohio that they can't even drive near the things without worrying about their hair standing on end...
...Heavily armed state troopers and sheriffs deputies ordered the party to pack up...
...They could have won with the farmers...
...It's time to forget our differences and work together to stop the corporations and bureaucracies from rolling over us...
...What we really need," says Gloria Woida, "is to get our farmers self-sufficient...
...The battle lines also seem to be hardening...
...As opposition and eco-sabotage escalated, Alice Tripp, a feisty retired farmer from El Rosa, decided to enter the 1978 DFL primary for governor...
...They said, 'We're going to cram this powerline down your throats.' " The farmers decided to cram back...
...The farmers' General Assembly Against the Powerlines has also made strong connections with the Native American movement...
...What they've done," says Kenny Thurk, "is build 420 miles of powerlines they can't defend...
...Construction has destroyed some 8,500 acres of prime farmland...
...For farmers with first-hand experience, other damage is irrefutable — decreased fertility and milk production among cows, imperiled crop production, and heavy shocks delivered to farmers working with metal equipment, especially during rainstorms or periods of high humidity...
...The whole thing is being built to serve the Midwestern power grid," says John Kearney, a member of a Twin Cities anti-nuclear and anti-powerline group called Northern Sun Alliance...
...The project is owned by two rural cooperatives — the United Power Association (UPA) and the Cooperative Power Association (CPA) — which serve much of the area through which the line passes...
...The power co-ops have told the farmers that the line is perfectly safe...
...There's two kinds of power," says Gloria Woida...
...The DFL, long the key Democratic stronghold in the upper Midwest, had dominated Minnesota politics for thirty years...
...Hordes of "giant blackbirds" spat shotgun pellets into the glass insulators that prevent the powerline from short-circuiting, doing about $5,000 damage per blast...
...And I'll tell you something: If the people decide that solar energy is what we want, there's just no way the government is going to squash it...
...The CPA/UPA operatives are now waging a classic war of attrition, buying out some farmers, threatening others with lawsuits and prosecution, hoping to open the line this summer...
...Coal by wire" — that is, power generated by coal and shipped over high-voltage transmission lines — would avoid the rail costs of shipping coal, the environmentalists' roadblocks against burning coal in urban areas, and the labor costs of dealing with the United Mine Workers...
...First they blinded the police with high-powered lights...
...It will include a July march against uranium mining and a massive "Survival Fair" to take place in the Black Hills in the summer of 1980...
...The coalition of farmers, Indians, and urban activists obviously goes beyond personal affinities or legal defense strategies — it cuts to the heart of the American power system...
...Then they opened fire with makeshift slingshots known as Harvey Wasserman is the author of "Energy War: Reports from the Front" (Lawrence Hill & Co...
...Instead they sent in the state troopers...
...We've got wind and methane, and we can grow our own grain for alcohol...
...That was not the end of it...
...Money power and people power...
...We at the Falkirk Mining Company are deeply committed to the preservation of non-union status," North American Coal Corporation's Robert Murray told a 1975 meeting of the Cooperative Power Association...
...At a recent rally, Native American activist Clyde Bellecourt called the farmers "the new Indians," and a farmer-Native American-anti-nuclear organizing meeting in Rapid City, North Dakota, in March set a year-long joint program for anti-mining and anti-powerline activities...
...If you want to work near the lines, everything you've got has to be grounded, including you.'' Powerline operators also routinely spray the right-of-way with toxic herbicides, a practice with serious health implications for anyone living nearby or eating food grown in the area...
...Jackie neither," he adds, nodding to his dark-haired wife, who was recently convicted on charges of aggravated assault stemming from an attempt to block a cement truck headed for the powerline...
...Both incumbents — Wendell Anderson, who was running to hold his Senate seat, and Rudy Perpich, the incumbent governor — had run roughshod over the farmers...
...Ironically, many of the powerline's staunchest opponents are part-owners in the companies building it...
...Most observers believed the DFL would carry the governorship and two U.S...
...Its operators are explicitly antiunion...
...At any rate, the project is not for the farmers...
...Indeed, the CPA/UPA management recently pulled its armed guards off night duty, essentially conceding that the 1,700 towers and thousands of insulators can't be protected...
...Kneed me in the back and jumped on my kidneys," he says wryly...
...We don't care how they look or what they did in the past," adds Alice Tripp, on whose farm six Twin City activists were recently arrested...
...Farmers in nearby western Wisconsin helped win the recent cancellation of a proposed plant at Tyrone, some miles southeast of the Twin Cities...
...Farmers on the line The Minnesota powerline fight may foreshadow a larger struggle Harvey Wasserman The flat, fertile, middle-American farmland of western Minnesota has become a battlefield in the most raucous "energy war" in the United States — one that has turned some of America's most conservative farmers into angry eco-raiders, garnered widespread support for their guerrilla tactics, and helped shatter the powerful Democratic Farmer-Labor Party (DFL...
...Now they're out...
...The electricity will go to the cities and the profits will go the big private utilities...
...But the companies are in serious financial trouble, and the farmers remain confident...
...Just to make sure it held, both Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale made special campaign trips to Minnesota...
...At best, he added, the insertion of such lines is "an enormous, utility-operated human experimentation program...
...They haven't had any experience with that much direct current," Jackie explains...
...There were other factors — Anderson had been elected governor, but had alienated many voters by appointing himself to the Senate seat and designating Perpich as governor...
...statewide poll conducted early this year by The Minneapolis Tribune showed 63 per cent of the public opposed to the powerline...
...I'd say there wasn't a single window left on those cop cars," recalls one local resident...
...At least five towers and hundreds of insulators have already been destroyed...
...Angered by the incident, some of the farmers disappeared into the fields, and within hours a "natural plague" began afflicting the powerline...
...Underwood is one of the first in a mushrooming network of generators being built at the mouths of western mines...
...That crunch of metal, glass, and wire could translate into a deafening roar for America's energy planners...
...The Minnesota line is the long tail of a $1.2 billion project that includes a lignite strip mine, North Dakota's Underwood coal station, the powerline itself, and a switching station at Delano, near Minneapolis...
...The rebellious farmers do not intend to allow the powerline to operate...
...And I'll put my money on the people...
...The Carter Administration's energy plan calls for a massive increase in the use of coal, much of it strip-mined from western Native lands...
...But ultimately it seems to have been the farmers who made the difference by voting Republican or not at all...
...Militant opposition to high-voltage lines has already surfaced in New York's northern Hudson Valley, is developing in Alabama and New Hampshire, and is bound to spread...
...If I were any good with a wrench," she declared, "I'd be out there unbolting towers myself...
...Meanwhile, martial law has already been tried in Stearnes and Pope counties, to no avail...
...Last summer, for example, about 150 residents of Stearnes and Pope counties, many of whom regularly milk thirty or more Holsteins, held a wienie roast near a powerline construction site...
...By the end of the night, large segments of the line had been mortally wounded...
...Perpich lost by roughly the same number of votes Alice Tripp had drawn in the primary, and Anderson was crushed in his race for the Senate...
...Shortly after her conviction, a tower near the Thurk farm crashed to the ground, debilitating the line...
...It is a positive effort of restructuring our employes' relations to increase productivity and motivation...
...If we can't get permits, we'll make the alcohol just like in the moonshine days...
...The three-year-old battle is over high-voltage powerlines designed to carry 800 kilovolts of direct current from an 1,100-megawatt coal-fired generator at Underwood, North Dakota, to a switching station near Minneapolis...
...The companies just came in here and started pushing people around," recalls Gloria Woida of Sauk Centre...
...And if the line goes into operation, they can also expect some severe side-effects...
...Never been arrested before in my life...
...wrist-rockets...
...The politicians and media scoffed, but when the dust settled, Alice Tripp had claimed 100,000 votes — 20 per cent of the total...
...Thurk has snapshots of himself being dragged through the snow and thrown over a fence by state troopers...
...The DFL lost the other Senate seat as well, largely because Don Fraser, its strongest candidate, who was also distrusted by the farmers, had failed to survive the primary...
...The farmers had other ideas...
...Indeed, if the costs of the project are added to the utilities' rate base, farmers along the line — who will get no power from it — can expect their electric bills to triple...
...It is also, as Murray repeatedly told his audience, a crucial link in a strategy aimed at blocking the power of the unions in Appalachian coal...
...But a number of recent studies have linked high-voltage lines to stunted growth, birth defects, heart disease, mental disorders, sexual impotency, and cancer...
...Indeed, for many of the farmers, the fight against the powerline has quickly translated into a fight for solar energy...
...When felony charges were brought against the farmers — almost 200 arrests to date have been made in some seventy separate incidents — the farmers recruited Twin Cities lawyers from the Wounded Knee Legal Defense/Offense Team...
...It may also foreshadow the most critical fight of the 1980s — the struggle for solar power...
...In 1976, small groups of farmers began banding together to block surveyors from taking their readings for construction of the powerline...
...Andrew A. Marino, a research physicist at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Syracuse, New York, recently told the New York Public Service Commission that "every biological effect induced in people by overhead high-voltage lines is potentially hazardous and should be avoided...
...Those damn lines, on a wet day, can throw shocks all over the place," says Kenny Thurk...
...They can't prove it's safe," says Kenny Thurk, a thirty-eight-year-old farmer from Villard, Minnesota, "and they can't prove they need it...
...A swarm of what the farmers call "Bolt Weevils" assaulted many of the 150-foot-high, $80,000 power towers, causing them to fall...
...Senate seats up for grabs last fall...
...50 per cent supported breaking the law to stop it...
...The national media ignored it," says John Kearney, "but it was the powerline that beat the DFL...
...The festive atmosphere was shattered when eighteen police patrol cars roared up to the bonfire...
...We don't need those damn nuclear plants or strip mining...
...Spending only $5,000 on her campaign, she stumped the rural areas, promoting the fight against the line...
Vol. 43 • July 1979 • No. 7
