UPPCO Land Sale Draws Ire of Local Citizens
The battle over Upper Peninsula Power Co.’s (UPPCO) land development plans around its hydroelectric projects in the Upper Peninsula is shaping up into a divisive fight. Wisconsin Public Service (WPS) is the parent company of UPPCO.
UPPCO has already sold 7300 acres of its land just outside a buffer zone around its hydro reservoirs, and plans to sell additional lands to developer Naterra Lands in the near future. In addition, UPPCO plans to grant Naterra a license so that lot buyers can use project lands in ways that may not be compatible with its Federal Energy RegulatoryCommission (FERC) license.UPPCO appears to have tried to hide these land deals, and did not announce its plans until just before the deal went through, and after local citizens began circulating information about the sale. This resulted in the formation of the Upper Peninsula Public Access Coalition. After much publicity, UPPCO announced it will now be holding a public meeting on the Bond Falls sale at the Ewen-Trout Creek High School February 2,2006 at 6:00 pm (EST). Too bad they already sold the land!
In northern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula, real estate companies (like Naterra) specializing in subdividing wilderness lands, have a horrible reputation. Most appear only interested in profits from land division and development, and not in protecting the environment, or enhancing the local tax base or economy. Rural subdivisions such as those proposed around UPPCO’s hydro projects may create an initial growth in the tax base, but in the long run will always cost local towns more in municipal services (road construction and maintenance, storm damage control, snow plowing, school bus routes, policing) as the infrastructure ages. Many miles of roads will be required for accessing these now remote lands. A worker for a contractor building roads into other Naterra projects at Stateline and Gaylord Lakes in the western U.P. said that at least 40 miles have been built there, and expects that well over 100 miles of road and millions of yards of fill will be required at the Bond Falls project.
Naterra is listed as a client of a slick Public Relations firm from Tennessee – AkinsCrisp Public Strategies. AkinsCrisp assesses the political environment for its clients and then identifies decision-makers and other key people who are influential in the targeted community. Messages are devised to pave the way to get fast results with county and township councils and zoning boards. Naterra seems to play this game well. It comes in under the radar and gets through much of the bureaucratic process before the public gets wind of their plans.
To gain a positive public image, Naterra works to spread its money around. Naterra recently donated $5,000 for the 2006 UP 200 Sled Dog Race here in Marquette, and has also donated over $2,000 to the Minnesota Environmental Initiative. (The principals of Naterra’s PR firm AkinsCrisp, have an extensive record of political donations toRepublican party candidates.)
Naterra Land, in its previous life as Taylor Investments, has done many developments in Tennessee, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. In addition to damaging the environment, some of these developments have resulted in bitter battles with local communities. With that track record, it does not look good for Bond Falls, Victoria Reservoir, Cataract Basin, Boney Falls, and AuTrain Basin, and other undeveloped lands UPPCO plans to sell.
Naterra asserts that "the aesthetics of these areas will not change significantly.” However, these flowages now have natural shorelines with no development. UPPCO and Naterra will allow placement of hundreds of docks, including cluster docks holding up to 10 boats, with lights, boat lifts, and other amenities along each shore and require stairways, hiking paths, and other developments to access the water. Naterra wants to allow lot owners to cut 30-50 foot wide "view corridors” so that they can better see the lake from picture windows. Currently, these shorelines are forested, with no cutting of trees permitted in this old-growth buffer zone. Now these lands are all open for public use, and people are free to fish from the shore, hunt, hike, bird-watch, and recreate in an undeveloped forest environment. After hundreds of lot owners build docks and bring their toys to the shoreline this will change in a major way.
Should the taxpayer subsidize the near-private use of what is supposed to be land equally open to everyone? Will citizens lose the right to use these lands in their natural condition, as they have for the last several decades, and as has been promised for the next 40 years under the terms of the hydroelectric licensing agreement?
UPPCO has stated that there were no agencies or conservancies interested in this land. The Nature Conservancy did express some interest in the land and asked to have maps and more information. Nothing was sent. Other inquiries to UPPCO last summer found that the land had already been sold. Very little information on the sale to Naterra was available until the deal was closed on December 29, 2005. According to an UPPCO January 10, 2006 press release, the rest of sale is supposed to be in the “pre-concept planning stage.”
Also, in April 2005, the US Forest Service actually made an offer, to purchase several hundred acres near Bond Falls. UPPCO refused to sell the land, asking instead for a land trade. When the land proposed for exchange was refused by the Forest Service because it was not in the public interest, negotiations were stopped by UPPCO.
Regarding the bulk of the land, the Forest Service told UPPCO that they could acquire the land if support was expressed by local governments. However, UPPCO recently claimed public agencies were "not interested."
Why didn’t UPPCO offer to help gain that local support?
UPPCO claims that selling the land is a big win for electric consumers. The biggest selling point was the withdrawal of a proposed 7.6 % rate increase in 2005. However, UPPCO announced it was asking for an 8.1 % increase on January 3, 2006.
The withdrawal of the proposed 2005 rate increase came with an agreement with the Michigan Public Service Commission that a portion of the land would be sold to the State of Michigan to protect its pristine qualities. This was done to get approval for treating profits from the land sale as "non-utility" profits. The intent of that agreement was to protect at least part of this land from development. If the land is not needed by UPPCO for hydroelectric operations, then it can be sold. But restrictions placed on the land through its FERC license should warrant a cooperative undertaking involving the US Forest Service, State of Michigan, and conservancies who would work to retain much of the lands unfragmented character.
Instead, UPPCO opted to try to hide a major land deal between two major holidays with no public input. Selling to a developer like Naterra will turn the whole tract into hundreds of 1.2-acre lots. Keeping the majority of this in public-access ownership is better for the land, better for the economy, better for tourism and public-access, and better for UPPCO’s reputation.