Charlestown
showdown over water deal and power plant
By
Will Collette
 |
| Photo of one of several protests by Narragansetts against the power plant (Photo by Steve Ahlquist, RI's Future) |
The hearing is being held especially for
Charlestown because of an announced deal between the Narragansett Indian Tribe
and Invenergy, a Chicago-based developer that proposes to build a controversial
fracked gas power plant in Burrillville at the other end of the state.
Charlestown
is now party to the case because some members of the Tribal government want
a lucrative sales agreement to serve as a back-up water supplier to that power
plant.
The power plant needs that back-up
agreement to meet regulatory requirements. The deal, if put into play, could
mean massive amounts of water drawn from the aquifer we all use and a fleet of
water trucks going back and forth to Burrillville.
By all appearances, there’s a consensus
in Charlestown that we do not want the groundwater we all share to be shipped
to Burrillville for a proposed fossil fuel power plant that is not needed and
runs against state efforts to combat climate change. We don't want this deal.
Charlestown had already joined nearly every other Rhode Island city and town by enacting a resolution of opposition to the power plant, but now we have become one of the frontline communities in this battle.
So far, the only public voice heard in
favor of the water deal has been that of Narragansett Tribal Medicine
Man John Brown who signed the contract with energy developer Invenergy. Mr.
Brown told ecoRI reporter Tim Faulkner that Invenergy offered the tribe a
lot of money to serve as a backup source of water and asked “What would you have us do?”
Other Narragansett
tribal members, including the Tribal Council, have answered Mr. Brown’s
question in testimony, public statements and street protests: “Don’t sell our water.”
We have since learned the deal
accepted by Mr. Brown on behalf of absentee
Chief Sachem Matthew Thomas who now lives in Florida calls for Invenergy
to pay the Tribe $220,000 a year just to listed as a potential water
source. Invenergy will pay for any actual water pumped and sent to Burrillville at the going
municipal rate for water.
What we don’t know is the actual amount
that may or may not be drawn from the aquifer or where the pumps would be
located. A recently surfaced letter from Mr. Thomas indicated the water may be
pumped from Crandall Farm, a property the Narragansett Tribe owns in Westerly.
Maybe this is a bit of misdirection, but
it is a distinction without a difference since the water will still be pumped
from the same aquifer. Now Westerly has a direct stake in this case.
The EFSB has already declared its
unwillingness to make a determination about the internal battles raging inside
the Narragansett Indian Tribe, where the embattled Matthew Thomas’ tribal
government has made the deal and everyone else in the tribe seems to oppose it.
I would advise my fellow Charlestown
residents who are not tribal members to also leave that issue alone. It is not
for us to say who governs the tribe.
Our focus needs to be on the harm a
major water draw-down would have on our drinking water, environment, land and
property. The Narragansetts
themselves have already shown that they can address the legitimacy of
contract signed by Messrs. Brown and Thomas as they work to resolve the broader internal conflict.
And for pity’s sake, PLEASE keep
Charlestown’s anti-Narragansett hired gun, East Providence attorney Joe Larisa,
out of the room.
Even though we all pay him $25,000
a year to represent Charlestown in opposition to anything the Tribe wants
to do, this is not the time for him to spout his rhetoric about how the town of
Charlestown holds dominion over the Tribe.
This is not the forum to debate the
issue of tribal sovereignty, especially since the EFSB has already stated
it will not get into it.
One of my favorite quotes from late
President Lyndon Johnson is “Don’t spit
in the soup; we’ve all got to eat it.”
For Charlestown, for the Tribe and for
all our neighbors who draw water from the Wood River aquifer, this is the core
issue.
We share this water. We all have a legal
right to this water. We all count on this water. Anyone who harms or threatens
to harm that water is doing that to us all.
A contract to sell large quantities of
this water to give a dubious industrial development a way to meet a regulatory
requirement is an affront to the entire community.
I am proud of the way just about
everyone in this community has come together. This could have been another one
of those issues that tears this town apart.
I wasn’t living in Charlestown during
the classic 1976 battle against the scheme to build a nuclear
power plant on the old Navy airfield that is now Ninigret Park and the
Ninigret National Wildlife Refuge. But from what I have been told, that too was
a battle that united Charlestown across class, race and culture.
So let’s stay focused. Resist attempts
to divide us.
Let’s not blow it.