Native Notes

American Electric Power Service Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of American Electric Power, is seeking proposals for long-term supply of renewable energy from new renewable energy projects with an aggregate name-plate rating totaling up to 200 MW on behalf of its utility operating company, Public Service Company of Oklahoma (PSO), for projects capable of being on-line by 12/31/10. The RFP and other details can be found at:
http://www.psoklahoma.com/news/renewrfp/.

The Canadian Electricity Association (CEA) released its annual North American policy paper today in Washington. Entitled  “Providing Reliable Energy in a Time of Constraints: A North American Concern”, the paper presents the Canadian industry’s views on opportunities for cooperation between Canada and the United States on challenges facing the electricity sector.

·        Constraints in Supply Generation

·        Transmission Constraints

·        Labor Constraints

The last item, Labor Constraints, was discussed in some detail at the International Institute for Indigenous Resource Management’s March 2008 Third Annual Tribal Energy Policy Roundtable.

The CEA policy paper cites the challenges an aging workforce and pending retirements could have on an industry already challenged by increasing demand and technology change, but what was most intriguing, from an indigenous peoples perspective, was some of the actions the Canadians have taken to address the labor constraints.

The policy paper suggests increasing participation of under-represented groups and expanding and improving skills training and apprenticeship funding as steps that could be taken to develop a skilled, educated and adaptable workforce and cites as examples, the Hydro Northern Training and Employment initiative that was launched as a result of two proposed Manitoba Hydro hydroelectric projects in Northern Manitoba. This initiative is training and preparing over 1,000 Aboriginal residents for 800 Manitoba Hydro construction and related employment opportunities. Another example of a pro-active industry-Aboriginal partnership is BC Hydro’s Aboriginal Employment and Education Strategy, established as a long term approach to building internal awareness and conducting recruitment outreach with Aboriginal communities in British Columbia.

Methinks a site visit by tribal workforce development planners to Manitoba and British Columbia may be in order.

What You Need to Know About Energy …
Read this FREE online! Full Book

The National Academies Press has published a very nice, very readable introduction to energy issues, What You Need to Know About Energy.  Targeted at the non-specialist or non-wonk, the well-illustrated, graphically rich work should serve very nicely as a text for middle and high school science and civics (do they still call it civics?) classes.  I’d like to have seen some discussion on ocean-based technologies but that’s a niggling criticism. I like the book’s strong message to the ideologically, monomaniacally inclined: “One thing is certain: There will be no single “silver bullet” solution to our energy needs. Tomorrow’s energy, like today’s, will come from a robust variety of sources.

And it’s free!

The International Institute for Indigenous Resource Management brought together representatives of Indian tribes, federal agencies, and industry at a workshop in Denver, Colorado to take the first step in establishing a tribal definition of “sustainable” uranium production. Why, you may ask, is a tribal definition of sustainable uranium production needed when Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley, Jr., signed the Diné Natural Resources Protection Act of 2005 which bans uranium mining and processing throughout Navajo Nation and the Oglala Sioux tribal council passed OST Resolution 07-0154, a resolution prohibiting any uranium operations on the reservation?

There are several reasons for tribes to define sustainability. First, nuclear generates approximately 17 percent of the electricity in the U.S. Second, China’s nuclear energy development plan, which had called for operating power capacity to hit 40 gigawatts (GW) by 2020, has been revised to a projected 60 GW. Third, now that concerns about climate change are part of the national energy policy equation, some experts believe nuclear power should be reconsidered since it does not emit greenhouse gases.  These points mean that uranium will be mined and processed—perhaps not on Indian reservations, but it will be mined and processed. Lastly are the map of major U.S. uranium reserves—the correlation between uranium reserves and Indian country and tribal interests is inescapable (a global map would show similar correlations between uranium with the lands of other indigenous peoples); and a Hawaiian proverb, ‘A’ohe ‘ulu e loa’a i ka pō kole o ka lou. No breadfruit can be reached when the picking stick is too short. (There is no success without preparation.)

Furthermore, no definition of sustainability in uranium production can be valid without addressing the environmental, human health, and other impacts uranium production has had on Indian tribes.

History is the memory of human experience. If it is forgotten or ignored, we cease in that measure to be human. Without history we have no knowledge of who we are or how we came to be, like victims of collective amnesia groping in the dark for our identity.

The push towards sustainable production of uranium is based in large measure on preventing the problems of the past. Of course avoiding the creation of “legacy” sites should play an important role in defining sustainability, but how should today’s definition of sustainability address legacy sites such as those on the lands of the Navajo Nation and Spokane Tribe? For example:

• What are, or should be, mining company strategies to build tribal capacity to deal with past impacts of mining?
• What role have federal agencies played in the past? What roles should they now be playing?
• How do local communities or their organizations involve themselves in capacity building, and how might partnership with mining companies, government, NGOs, and tribes facilitate this?
• Can enhanced tribal institutional capacity facilitate enhanced sustainable tribal and regional development? How?

On September 16-17, 2008 the International Institute for Indigenous Resource Management is organizing the Roundtable on Climate, Tribal Energy Development, and Habitat Protection.  The roundtable will bring together high level tribal, NGO, industry, and government leaders and experts in the many fields of energy, environment, wildlife, science and technology, law, and policy in a series of facilitated dialogues to see if and how tribes can design energy development projects that support multiple purposes and multiple uses. 

Similarly, roundtable participants will see if and how tribes can use intertribal approaches to offset carbon emissions and other environmental impacts that will support multiple purposes including, among other things, enhancing fish and wildlife habitat. 

A final roundtable objective is to establish a framework for developing and harmonizing tribal energy and habitat protection/expansion policies and institutions.

Contact Mervyn Tano at: +1 303-733-0481 or mervtano@iiirm.org for more information.

The International Institute for Indigenous Resource Management is a law and policy research institute based in Denver, Colorado. Institute staff and associates identify emerging issues and trends and help Indian tribes and other indigenous peoples develop the systems and institutions needed to protect and advance their interests.

About nine months ago we identified transportation as one of those issues that would be exacerbated by impacts of climate change and rising energy costs, and would therefore pose extraordinary problems to Indian tribes, especially those located in the rural American West.

As the transportation paradigm changes (for example the electrification of transport and the proliferation of smarter vehicles and smart highways) in response to these twin pressures, the planning, construction, maintenance, and improvement of this nation’s transportation infrastructure by state departments of transportation can potentially trigger state-local government-tribal disputes. However, these actions can also become the objective of state-local government-tribal collaborative efforts to take advantage of the opportunities these changes may present.

Our sense is that collaboration requires a mutual awareness of the workings and procedural requirements of federal and state transportation statutes, policies, regulations, and planning and budgetary processes; knowledge of the broad range of tribal environmental, social, cultural, health and safety interests that may be affected by transportation projects, and an understanding of the linkages between these interests and other legal and statutory requirements such as the federal-Indian trust doctrine, treaty rights, AIRFA, NAGPRA, etc.

Six months ago we initiated discussions with the Sicangu Policy Institute of the Sinte Gleska University of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe and the Haskell Indian Nations University around a collaborative effort with the International Institute for Indigenous Resource Management to establish a tribal university transportation research institute to conduct studies on the impacts of transportation on tribal interests and to carry out a communications program that would promote state-local government-tribal collaboration.

As an example of such consciousness-raising activities, we began planning the Workshop on Communicating, Consulting, and Cooperating with Indian Tribes on State Transportation Projects: The Role of the National Environmental Policy Act with the Sicangu Policy Institute. The workshop was held in Rapid City, South Dakota in November, 2007.

At that workshop I spoke with Dr. Lance A. Roberts, Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering about his efforts to establish a University Transportation Center (UTC) focused on transportation infrastructure on Indian Reservations at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. It was obvious to the both of us that collaboration between the proposed UTC, the proposed tribal university transportation research institute, and the International Institute for Indigenous Resource Management would bring the full range of scientific, engineering, legal, policy, social, and cultural expertise to bear on present and future transportation infrastructure issues.

We think the proposed UTC deserves support from Indian country, but caution that unless the tribal colleges create an institute with comparable weight and gravity to partner with UTC, the potential that the tribal colleges will be captured and become a satellite of the UTC is very real.

Here’s the gist of some conversations I’ve been having with some colleagues on the proposed Desert Rock Energy Project.

Earlier this year the folks at the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory issued an update to the earlier Estimating Freshwater Needs to Meet Future Thermoelectric Generation Requirements. I think the report findings, i.e., that water is a significant emerging factor in economic development, especially at local and regional levels, support my unrealized preference that a programmatic analysis of energy resource development precede the site- and project-specific Desert Rock proposal.

A typical 500-MW coal-fired power plant uses over 12 million gallons per hour of water for cooling steam turbine exhaust. On the plus side, according to the Draft EIS, the Desert Rock technology uses a lot less water—168,000 gallons of water per hour—for a much larger power output. To my way of thinking however, this represents an opportunity cost—all that water is no longer available for other economic development efforts. Which is why the DOE report emphasizes that water resources must be included in planning efforts to ensure that water supplies are not only currently available, but also on hand for all future water-use sectors over the long term, including thermoelectric generation.

The Department of Energy is conducting research directed at advanced cooling, water recovery and reuse, use of non-traditional (impaired) water, and wastewater treatment technologies. The program goal is to ensure that, by 2015, technologies are available for initial commercial deployment that can reduce power plant freshwater withdrawal and consumption and minimize the impacts of power plant operation on water quality. This is good but I think we still need to do some research on the socio-cultural aspects of water recover and reuse. This is why I suggested earlier that the San Francisco Peaks case should trigger some tribal discussion on water reuse. The Policy and Environmental Institutes at the Diné College seem perfectly situated do that work.