It appears that Gainesville Regional Utilities has decided to practice government in the coal dust rather than government in the sunshine. The following is a quote from the feature column County Lines and City Limits which appeared in the October 6, 2003 edition of the Gainesville Sun. Begin quote GRU just isn`t admitting it plans to build a plant on land it owns near its Deerhaven Power Plant on U.S. 441, said Marilyn Walker, a nearby resident. During a recent workshop on GRU expansion, she said GRU officials "danced around" questions about building the plant. Opponents already have scheduled an expert on utility rates and billing to speak against a new coal-fired facility. GRU spokesman Dan Jesse said rumors of a new power plant are "just not true." "I don`t know where they came up with that," he said. End quote On December 15, 2003, at a special meeting of the Gainesville city commission, GRU officials unveiled plans to build a coal fired plant at GRU`s Deerhaven site on U.S. 441. Although they left open the possibility of building the plant elsewhere or even not building a plant at all, they made it plain that the only serious question in their minds was whether to build a relatively small plant on their own or to build a larger plant in partnership with other utilities. At the end of the meeting, the city commission appeared to be primarily concerned with the question of whether to go it alone with a small plant or to build a big one with other uilities. Their main qualm seemed to be about local control nd whether building a big plant would grant too much control o the other utilities. There was no serious discussion of whether or not to build the plant at all. Cynical observers of local politics may be unperturbed by GRU`s efforts to obscure their intention to build a new coal fired plant at Deerhaven. They might even point to the outcome of the special meeting as an example of GRU`s expertise in such matters. But an outright lie in response to a direct question from the local press must leave even the cynics at least slightly breathless. Whether or not Mr. Jesse knew his statement was inoperative at the time that he made it is not the point here. The point is that no one from GRU made a public correction of his statement in the days following the publication of his remarks even though at least some of GRU`s officials clearly knew that it was incorrect at the time that he made it. On October 11, 2003, a group of residents attended the meeting alluded to in the Sun article to hear local energy consultant Adrienne Burgess discuss the need for and economic justification of a new coal fired plant at Deerhaven. Two employees of GRU, David Richardson and Mike Spiller, attended the meeting and participated in the discussion that followed Ms. Burgess` presentation. At the meeting, neither Mr. Richardson nor Mr. Spiller offered to correct Mr. Jesse`s statement. Nor did they challenge the fundamental assumption of the meeting that GRU was planning to build a new coal burning plant at Deerhaven. GRU`s presentation at the special city commission meeting offers further evidence that they had plans for a new coal fired plant prior to Mr. Jesse`s statement. Detailed plans of the sort offered to the commission at that meeting are not cobbled together in a couple of months. Many months of planning clearly preceded that presentation. Apparently, GRU officials fear that a forthright statement that they intend to build a coal burning merchant plant at Deerhaven would trigger unwanted public scrutiny of their plan. It appears that, above all, they want to control public dialogue on the plan and avoid the annoyance of defending a purely money making venture. But there is a much larger problem here. The real issue with GRU`s denial of their plans to build a coal burning plant at Deerhaven is the corrosion of public confidence in the honesty and integrity of GRU, and its officials, which such tactics engender. As lay persons, we are at a disadvantage when it comes to evaluating technical information that GRU provides in support of its plans. One way we can compensate for this is to judge whether we believe that the officials providing that information are honest and impartial. If our trust in the integrity of those officials is compromised, our compensation strategy fails and we are left to wonder if the information is factual or if it has been tailored to bolster their own policy decisions. No one has a more urgent need of assurance of the integrity of GRU`s information than the members of the city commission. They must ultimately approve or disapprove GRU`s plans and bear responsibility for the results of those decisions. Without faith in the accuracy and impartiality of GRU`s data, the commission would find itself standing on a foundation of sand rather than rock when making such decisions. GRU officials took a big step down a long and slippery slope when they decided to publicly disavow any knowledge of plans to build a new coal burning plant at a time when they clearly had plans to do just that. At the bottom of that slope, they may find that government in the coal dust is actually less pleasant than government in the sunshine.
Peter Rebmann
Northwest Gainesville Coalition of Homeowners Associations | 
