Originally posted at ThinkGreenFund.org/blog

 
“I think that keeping it informal was pretty key.”

That was Jacob Bintliff, campaign coordinator for the Think Green Fund campaign which will help put student-backed green funds at up to 7 Texas colleges this spring. He had just spent his Saturday training student leaders from Houston, Denton, College Station, Austin, and San Antonio on key issues and tactics for creating green fees on their own campuses.

He and I were sitting down for a beer, both to counteract the huge intake of caffeine we’d suffered throughout the day, and to have a chance to reflect on where the campaign stood.

“Everyone seemed pretty engaged. They were taking notes, nodding along. At the end it seemed hectic, but people were getting stuff done – I saw one group put together a campaign video in like 10 minutes.”

He was right. These campaigns are on track.

The students at UNT decided they wanted to have a special election for the fee. We sat down together and went through campus election by-laws and policies and figured out that they’d need support from 2/3 of the Student Senate or a petition of about 1,800 students (5% of 36,000) to get it on the ballot. They’re going to do both.

The Aggie students may be the best organized we’ve seen so far, but they also have the toughest campaign rules to contend with. They have not begun campaigning because campus rules restrict campaign activities to one week before the election. Despite polls showing widespread support for sustainability funding among Aggie students, the green fund faces opposition from, ironically, the local chapter of Texas Young Conservatives (formerly Young Conservatives of Texas). It’s ironic because Rep. Fred Brown (R-College Station) was a co-sponsor to the bill that gives students the right to vote on green funds, and the bill was signed into law by Gov. Rick Perry – twice. Knowing that the measure is likely to pass due to popular support, the TYC have resorted to secretly attending environmental group meetings in the hopes of finding a rule violation in hopes of throwing the initiative out. It’s not likely to happen, though. The green fund supporters have been working with campus administrators for almost a year. They know the rules inside and out, and have been assured by the election commissioner that results would only be thrown out over substantive violations, not technicalities.

In addition to the students who made it to Austin for the weekend, groups from UT El Paso and UT Pan America met for planning sessions and called in to discuss progress and their ideas with us. All of this demonstrates why we’ve spent the last two years building a coalition of student organizers. We didn’t need a formal summit or to advertise our training. We called up student leaders from all over Texas, asked them what they needed, and developed a weekend-long program around those needs. Now we’re set to accomplish our most ambitious goal to date. That’s the power of working together.

A couple quick updates this time. Paige Menking is a VP at Southwestern’s Students for Environmental Activism and Knowledge, the group that is working to get Georgetown’s obstinate City Council to just listen to a couple brief presentations regarding their long range energy plan. She submitted a letter to the editor to both the Williamson County Sun Times and the Austin American Statesman. Her letter was printed (old-style ink on paper kind of printed) in the Statesman yesterday:

Georgetown’s energy plan

A group of respectful, well-prepared and informed Southwestern students recently were turned away from speaking at the Georgetown City Council meeting about the city’s 2030 energy plan, its support of San Antonio’s proposed nuclear project and information about practical alternatives.

Had we been allowed to speak, we would have explained that Georgetown is locking us into the most expensive form of energy available and that CPS Energy’s plant will place huge stress on the Colorado River, diverting up to half its flow.

And we would have expressed our desire for more public input in Georgetown’s energy policies, which now seems even more necessary.

So we will be back at the next meeting, pushing for a cleaner energy future for Central Texas. We will not be discouraged, and we will make our voices heard. Because we will be inheriting the high costs of nuclear — both environmental and financial.

Paige Menking
menkingp@southwestern.edu
Georgetown

Congratulations Paige! Just another clear example of why people in power should try just an itsy bit harder to be open and democratic instead of using questionable procedural tactics to quash debate.

Which brings me to update numero dos. SEAK’s President, Connor Hanrahan, went back to the City Secretary’s office last week to sign up students and experts to testify to City Council once again. The staff there expressed sincere apologies about what had happened the week before and said that they were pretty confused themselves about exactly what had happened. It was clear what the intent of the students was and it was clear what the intent of the City Secretary’s office was. So exactly who decided we shouldn’t be allowed to speak?

In the fall of 2009 we had our first regional summit – the ReEnergize Houston Campus Sustainability Summit. It was fantastic! We pulled together students, professors, staff, and administrators from campuses throughout the city so they could talk about what they were doing, develop networks, and figure out how to put sustainability at the forefront of each campus’s agenda.

At the end of the event, the Assoc. VP for University Services at UH and the Director of Sustainability at Rice University decided to co-host a meeting for campus sustainability staff and coordinators next month. They will be joined by the Executive Director for Government Relations and Sustainability at Houston Community College, as well as representatives from other area campuses.

Here’s a quick taste of what the conference was like:

ReEnergize Houston Summit from Public Citizen on Vimeo.

SUMMIT SPEAKERS: Dr. Barry Lefer, Assistant Professor of Atmospheric Science, Atmospheric Chemistry at UH Dr. Peter Bishop, Associate Professor for Future Studies at UH Al Lewandowski, Manager over Demand-Side Energy Management & Conservation at UT Austin Joe Meppelink, Director of Research at Hines College of Architecture Architect Andrew Vrana, Visiting Professor at Hines College of Architecture Dr. Bob Randall, Former Director of Urban Harvest, Inc. Praween Dayananda, Campus Field Coordinator for National Wildlife Federation Trevor Lovell, State Director of ReEnergize Texas

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Meet Connor Hanrahan, President of Students for Environmental Activism and Knowledge at Southwestern University. As we said in our last post, Connor and other members of SEAK joined with experts from Public Citizen, Clean Water Action, and ReEnergize Texas went to the Georgetown City Council to talk about the city’s energy plan. He did everything the way he was supposed to, but apparently they didn’t want to hear about it.

We’ll try to get you more video from the city itself, but for now this is what we captured. See how nice we were?

SEAK Students Denied Opportunity to Speak at Georgetown City Council from Public Citizen on Vimeo.

On Tuesday, students from Southwestern University’s Students for Environmental Activism and Knowledge (SEAK) had intended to speak before the Georgetown City Council regarding the 20 year energy plan for their city.  They had registered an agenda item with the City Secretary’s Office, asked all the right questions about who could speak and for howlong, and everyone was in City Council chambers ahead of the meeting forms in hand and polite, thoughtful, well-reasoned remarks committed to memory.

SEAK’s charismatic President, Connor Hanrahan, went to the mic and spoke politely about hoping to form a positive “working relationship” with the city as they discussed aspects of the energy plan and in particular a provision to purchase 30% of their electricity from nuclear power plants.

“We are not here to protest nuclear,” he said, “but want to discuss new information that affects this plan.”

And then the Mayor dropped a bomb.  Citing a “misunderstanding” about City Council procedures, he informed Connor and the group of students and allies he’d brought with him that they would not be allowed to speak at the meeting that evening.  To his credit, Mayor Garver did make an effort at conciliation by offering Connor the opportunity to nominate 2 members of his party to speak for 3 minutes apiece, but the notion was quickly rebuked by Councilwoman Pat Berryman, a known proponent of nuclear power.

Does this sound familiar to anyone?  Think Pedernales Electric Coop and CPS Energy.  These two major electric utilities in Texas have been recently embroiled in controversy over failure to provide information, give the public access to speak, and making bad, even corrupt decisions from positions of power.  As a result, reform candidates have been elected to the PEC Board of Directors and two of its former members face multiple felony indictments.  At CPS, two executives have been placed on leave while its board investigates why the utility failed to disclose new cost estimates to the public and the San Antonio City Council.

Why would Georgetown’s Mayor and City Council tell local students they had no right to speak about the energy future of their own city?  Because the rules said so?  Can a member of the City Council not make a motion to suspend the rules?  In fact they can, but no member of the City Council had the courage or good sense to make that motion and give their constituents the opportunity to weigh in on an issue of city governance.

Georgetown’s website recently posted an article patting the city on the back for moving forward with a citizen participation plan aimed at increasing civic engagement.  This little episode made clear that such a plan is badly needed.

Georgetown is not a big city.  As of last year the population was a little under 50,000.  David Foster, an activist from Clean Water Action who had been invited by SEAK to speak at the meeting, talked fondly beforehand about the small-town feeling that had drawn him and his wife to the city for a short retreat just a week earlier.

But in this same small town, if an ordinary citizen and a couple of his or her friends want to bring an issue up to their elected city council, the answer appears to be “I’m sorry, but we don’t care to hear about it.  You’ll just have to wait until one of us decides that your issue is worthy of our consideration.”

Newsflash Georgetown City Council – your rules need changing.  A person shouldn’t have to work themselves raw if they want to let a few people speak to you about an issue or bring in an expert or two who’ve done some research on the subject.  Even the Texas Legislature, where lawmakers have only 140 days every 2 years to make important decisions affecting the entire state, allows people to simply show up, sign up, and speak directly to Representatives and Senators.

The truth of the matter is that the City Council and Georgetown Utility Services made a boneheaded decision when they 1) made nuclear power 30% of their future energy mix and 2) sent a representative to San Antonio to speak on behalf of CPS Energy in defending the nuclear project.  He was 1 of 17 people who spoke for the plant, while 63 spoke against it.  And now that nuclear project is embroiled in controversy as rising cost estimates have made it too expensive for San Antonio and it is becoming clear that utility officials attempted to hide that information from City Council as they prepared to vote on a $400 million bond package for the plant.

The Georgetown City Council should know that this kind of stonewalling can only hurt them.  PEC stonewalled its customers and got one of the biggest utility scandals in Texas history.  CPS did a little better regarding the public but nevertheless erred on the side of closed-door-meetings and non-disclosure and has put itself on very thin ice with the City Council and the public.

Being open and transparent is not as much of a hassle as you might think, and especially not in a small town.  Had the City Council bothered to listen to its own residents, they might have learned that programs aimed at efficiency could save residents money.  They might have learned that nuclear power is generally the most expensive form of energy commercially available.  They might have learned that reliable alternatives such as solar power with natural gas back-ups cost far less than energy from new nuclear reactors.  Those crazy environmentalists with their fiscally responsible approach to energy policy!

The members of SEAK, Mr. Foster, and representatives from Public Citizen and ReEnergize Texas will be back in two weeks.  We will jump through the new hoops City Council has erected, or we’ll just ask Councilwoman Patty Eason to represent the students of Southwestern, who live in her district, by making the energy plan a Council Action Item or whatever terminology they need it to be in order to sit through the unwanted babbling of their own citizens. But beware, City Council.  That babbling has had a strange way of coming true lately, particularly when it comes to nuclear power, and if the CPS experience is any indication that’s one train you don’t want to get hit by.

This is a quick update to our last post.

So far there has been light coverage in the Austin American Statesman and a local blog, Eye on Williamson County. We anticipate an article in Sunday’s Williamson County Times, and press conference organizer Paige Menking got a call from a reporter with the San Antonio Current which has been critical of CPS’s nuclear proposal. Staff at the Statesman also indicated they would send a reporter to Georgetown’s city council meeting on Tuesday to cover SEAK students officially presenting their request to the city.

We now have video of the press conference available, so enjoy!

SEAK Press Conference in Opposition to CPS Nuclear Proposal from Public Citizen on Vimeo.

Today at noon, a group of students at Southwestern University known as SEAK, Students for Environmental Activism and Knowledge, held a press conference at the Williamson County Courthouse asking Georgetown’s city council to reconsider its support for 2 new nuclear reactors proposed for the South Texas Nuclear Project. The project is currently led by CPS Energy of San Antonio and NRG Energy, a private utility company based in New Jersey.

Connor Hanrahan, a senior at Southwestern and president of SEAK, called on the city council to “reconsider [its] support for this project, and to do so in a public forum where the voices of citizens can be heard.”

Hanrahan was referring both to Georgetown’s long range energy plan which includes a substantial investment in nuclear power, and to an appearance made by the city utility’s Jim Briggs at a public meeting hosted by CPS Energy in San Antonio.

“It was premature for the utility to be showing public support for this project,” said Trevor Lovell of ReEnergize Texas. He noted that the nuclear project faces stiff public opposition in San Antonio. Mr. Briggs was 1 of 17 individuals speaking in favor of the plant at the public meeting held on September 28. A total of 63 individuals spoke in opposition to the plant at the same meeting.

Matthew Johnson of Public Citizen’s Texas Office spoke about the growing financial risk associated with Georgetown’s plan.

“The estimated cost of the nuclear expansion at the South Texas Project has doubled since Georgetown’s city council approved their energy plan,” Johnson said. “There’s a strong case to be made that rethinking that plan with new assumptions would be appropriate to protect ratepayers.”

Siting a recent article by Asher Price of the Austin American Statesman describing a
conflict over water between LCRA and southeast Texas rice farmers, Lovell also expressed concern about the impact the new nuclear reactors would have on water flowing in the Colorado River.

“In a drought year the 2 reactors currently at STP consume almost half the flow of the Colorado River where it meets gulf coast estuaries. Adding two new reactors will put wetland wildlife at substantial risk and may wipe local rice farmers out completely.”

The coalition plans to speak at the Georgetown City Council meeting next week and deliver a letter to each Council member asking them to rescind their support of the project and reconsider their commitment to 30% nuclear in their current 2035 energy plan.

A video of the press conference will be available later today.

Last spring a coalition of student leaders from all over Texas pressured state lawmakers to pass a bill providing student bodies greater authority to create “environmental service fees” on their campuses. In a session that produced very few new laws HB 3353 passed with bipartisan support, a major legislative victory for us at ReEnergize Texas.

Across the country, 94 colleges and universities have established such fees which pay for renewable energy, land conservation, local food projects and more, but the only one in Texas is at Texas State University in San Marcos. The students who helped get HB 3353 passed are now working together to change all that. Their goal is to make Texas the leading state when it comes to campuses with student-driven green funds.

“Our first statewide conference call was a great success,” said Jacob Bintliff, a student leader from UT Austin. “We had students from 8 different campuses, everyone is pretty much on board, and we’re all reaching out to neighboring campuses to broaden the coalition.”

The final language of the bill limits student bodies to imposing fees no larger than $5 per semester. The issue must be voted on by the students during a student election, which are usually held each spring. So far the students are reporting great success.

“We met with the president of SGA for the University of Houston, and he seems very supportive so far,” says Jason Cantu, lead organizer for the ReEnergize Houston chapter.

These campaigns have been very popular nationally as well. According to research done by Jacob Bintliff, only 3 such efforts have ever been defeated. He notes that in 2 of these cases it seems possible that campus politics, rather than the merits of the campaign, may have been responsible for the defeats.

Still, students hoping to create green funds for their campuses will have an uphill battle. The tough economic times are leading some students to question the timing of the campaigns.

My response – referendum campaigns are tough, but even if it looks hopeless the campaign itself will raise awareness, bring new people to your cause, help you build new partnerships and help unify your group. Even if you lose, you will build the skills and networks you need to win next year.

In San Antonio the municipal electric utility, CPS Energy, has proposed spending $5.2 billion on two new nuclear reactors.  They claim to need the power for San Antonio’s growing energy demand, but they have failed to engage the public and have a meaningful conversation with city officials about what this would mean.

ReEnergize Texas has joined the coalition Energia Mia to oppose this plant and instead back the vision of

Mission Verde.  Julio Lopez is an activist who has joined us through our partnership with the Esperanza Center.  Here is his first story:

On Tuesday September 15, I attended a CPS sponsored Neighbor Night in district 4. Here residents were able to see yet again a presentation clearly drafted to entangle people in numbers and words only those with a strong background on the subject could understand.

CPS claimed to have made an honest effort to provide residents with clear and comprehensive information readily made available upon request. They said there were books of information on the proposal for anyone seeking further knowledge on this issue to be found at every public library in San Antonio. So on Wednesday I decided to visit a local library to take a look at these public information books.

When introduced to these books at the district 4 meeting, one got the impression that the information would be found in basic format that anyone could understand. I arrived at the library, approached the front desk and asked,” I was told CPS delivered some books providing information on the upcoming nuclear proposal…” the librarian politely responded, “ Umm… let me see… usually we would have something like that here [pointing to an information area ]… hold on, let me ask.” Once everything was sorted out and she started to hand me the books one by one, she says, “Maybe you should wait for the movie.” I stood there starring at a stack of paper about a foot high.

I’m really impressed with CPS’s efforts to inform the public. We’re less than a month away from a decision, and only two weeks ago these volumes became available. Three years worth of information, and we’re supposed to read and understand all the legal terminology in a few weeks. Thanks, CPS.

The Summer of Solutions program has been getting youth engaged in cool projects all over the country, and in Austin we’ve been working with low income neighborhoods east of I-35 trying to figure out what people want, what they need, and how we can best serve their interests.

A lot of our work has focused on energy efficiency in homes, but another really important movement growing on the east side is locally produced food.  We organized a workday at the Montopolis Community Center where staffers have been maintaining a few garden plots benefiting the WIC Program (WIC stands for Women, Infants, and Children).

Meet a few of the great folks who came out and helped us rebuild this garden:

Summer of Solutions – Montopolis Community Garden from Public Citizen on Vimeo.

To learn more about other local food projects going on in Austin, check out the Sustainable Food Center, Green Corn Project, and Resolution Gardens, all of which have helped us out in one way or another this summer.

We had a good time at the workday, and we’re going back next week to host a free gardening class to help the locals maintain this garden or start their own.  We’re also planning to help install new garden beds at Faith Presbyterian Church with help from Resolution Gardens, and have been working with the Rosewood Community Center on installing some garden space there.  

We’re still learning as we go, and we’re hoping to find enough volunteers to make Summer of Solutions into a year-round program. If you’re interested in these kinds of projects and you live in Texas, email trevor.lovell[at]gmail.com to get more involved. If you live outside of Texas, visit the Summer of Solutions page linked at the top of this post.