DRIFTLESS DIVIDED: CARDINAL-HICKORY CREEK AND WISCONSIN TRANSMISSION RESISTANCE

Abstract

The U.S. is experiencing a renewable energy building boom. Transmission lines, along with wind and solar farms, are being proposed and built, across the country. In order to unlock renewable potential, most abundant in the nation’s center, we have been told, we need to build high voltage transmission lines (HVTLs) to get electricity to where it’s needed. These are not small projects and their price tags are growing. As public serving infrastructure, how they’re built matters. The way they’re designed will contribute to how they engage with, and serve society over time. Circulating discourses posit that “we need more HVTLs,” but often stop there, not asking, “what kind of HVTLs do we need?” Rural communities along the path of these projects often resist them, and as a result, developers and some supporters of renewable energy blame those communities, not only for slowing down individual projects but for slowing down the national transition to renewable energy. They are often depicted as either self-centered NIMBY’s (Not In My BackYard), overly pure “tradeoff denying” environmentalists, or “angry farmers” who just don’t like change, don’t know what they’re talking about, and aren’t making productive suggestions for alternatives. A narrative of “green civil war”1 depicts farmers and conservationists at war with renewables. This transition does need to happen quickly, in order for us to effectively address climate change. However, this common set of assumptions might actually be slowing the transition down more. Expecting the “barrier” of those kinds of opposition, HVTL developers often come into communities defensively, and at the last minute, delivering information selectively, and in one direction, an approach which ends up perpetuating conflict, lawsuits, and delays. I wanted to understand why communities are frequently opposing these “regional/RTO” projects, and who is being served by different kinds of HVTLs. To uncover the complexity invoked by these questions, and with a desire to understand the HVTL “issue” from a granular, community perspective, a regional, RTO perspective, and the perspective of the “national, super-grid,” prioritized by the Biden Administration and recommended by experts, I investigated one of these “regional/RTO” projects within MISO, which was particularly controversial in the area it cut across.