sacred groundsacred groundA small Dakota Indian community was at the heart of one of the most contentious issues in the Minnesota state legislature this spring. The Mdewakanton ("those who were born of the waters") tribe shares Prairie Island – a small island southeast of the Twin Cities – with a double nuclear power plant operated by Xcel Energy Corporation (formerly Northern States Power, or NSP), which opened the plant in 1973 less than half a mile from their homes. Xcel, which has stored nuclear waste in above-ground dry casks on the island since 1995, announced last year that it needs additional storage space for the radioactive spent fuel. Without permission for expanded storage, Xcel said, it would be forced to shut down in 2007 – six to seven years before its current licenses expire.
For the Mdewakanton, Xcel’s request represented a betrayal of promises by both Xcel and the federal government.
For the environmental community, it represented the danger of reversal of state policy favoring a gradual transition to renewable energy.
And for advocates of justice for native communities, it represented one more instance of a native group bearing the brunt of U.S. energy policy.
The plant’s siting on Prairie Island was itself a betrayal, many believe.
The federal government "ignored its trust responsibility to act in the best interest of the tribe" by allowing the plant to be built there, says Jake Reint, a spokesperson for the Prairie Island Indian Community (PIIC). "At first they were led to believe that it was perhaps a steam-generating plant and that it would provide jobs for them and that it would be a good thing. Well, quickly it turned into something they weren’t sure of, something that was clearly sited there because of who they were, because they didn’t have the resources that would have allowed them a voice in the process."
For 30 years Prairie Island residents have lived, physically and psychologically, under the shadow of the nuclear plant, says Audrey Bennett, president of the Prairie Island Tribal Council.
"You know how, after Sept. 11, there was this heightened alert and this code orange? Well, imagine that a thousand times more. That’s how the people of Prairie Island have lived their lives for the last 30 years – always on the alert. You know, any noise we hear over there, it’s like, oh, I hope it doesn’t blow. We prayed every day about it."
Prairie Island has traditionally been considered a sacred place, says Eric Buffalohead, an anthropologist at Augsburg College in Minneapolis who is a member of the Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma and a board member of Minnesotans for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ME3), an independent nonprofit.
"It has spiritual significance to the Dakota that goes back probably as long as they’ve been in Minnesota. In 1862, when the Dakota were removed, people came back and hid out and camped at Prairie Island even with a threat to their lives, for years and years, until Congress finally set aside the present acreage they have."
Bennett – who says that "the whole state of Minnesota is sacred to the Dakota people" – describes changes the tribe has witnessed.
"We have noticed that a lot of our traditional medicines are weaker. The food we ate is no longer there. The people will not eat anything that comes out of the river anymore, and the wild deer and the muskrats and the beavers that we grew up on aren’t there anymore."
Cancer rates seem to have increased.
"There has been a relative who has died of some form of cancer every year, every other year," Bennett says. "Is it eating the food that we plant in the soil there and drinking the water? Is it the air that we breathe every day? We’re having a difficult time proving it, but we’re in a process of trying to start some type of baseline studies."
For many years, the community felt that its concerns about the plant – from health problems to the difficulty of evacuating an island with only one road leading on and off – were overlooked. In the early 1990s, when NSP sought initial approval for dry-cask storage of the nuclear waste on Prairie Island, the tribe worked with environmental groups to fight the proposal. In 1994, the state of Minnesota and NSP reached an agreement that authorized the company to store waste on the island, but limited the number of casks to 17. The tribe was given legal authority to enforce this agreement. At the time, NSP’s president promised never to ask the legislature for more storage space. As part of the deal, NSP was required to contribute to a fund to explore renewable energy alternatives. No money was allocated to address the concerns of the people living on the island.
"The environmental community received considerable payments for renewable development on the order of $500,000 per cask per year – I think it’s currently generating something like $8.5 million a year," Reint says. "The tribe’s health and safety needs were completely ignored."
A national waste storage site?In recent years, PIIC leaders have worked to pressure the federal government to honor its commitment to open a national waste storage site – a controversial plan, given the hazards of transporting radioactive material and the objections of others on whose land the waste would be stored. Plans for national storage at Yucca Mountain in Nevada have drawn opposition from members of the Western Shoshone tribe there.
"They’re just pitting one tribal group against another tribal group," Buffalohead says. "Quite frankly, I don’t think Yucca Mountain will ever happen. There’s going to be a huge backlash if they try to send that stuff through communities. And these casks that they have for storage are not suited for transportation. They’d have to take the stuff out of the old casks and put it in new casks, which some environmentalists say could lead to an accident."
Moreover, even if the Yucca Mountain site is opened, it is uncertain whether it would ever take waste from Prairie Island, according to J. Drake Hamilton, science policy director for ME3.
"The federal Department of Energy has now said that the storage site will be full by 2009," Hamilton says. "There is more nuclear waste that exists now in this country than could ever be stored at Yucca Mountain. If you can’t be assured that it’s going to move out, then you should stop producing it."
Bennett says that nuclear material has been transported for many years without incident, and emphasizes that her tribe is "the only community in the U.S. that lives 600 yards away from a nuclear reactor. We respect other tribes’ sovereignty – and just like other countries, we’re not always going to agree. But in my mind, what’s right for my people is not to have it sitting next to us."
Given the uncertainties around a national storage site and the unfeasibility of ending reliance on nuclear power by 2007, the tribal council negotiated a deal with Xcel that allows the company to store additional nuclear waste on Prairie Island in exchange for compensations that address the tribe’s longstanding concerns. The multimillion-dollar agreement was ratified by the tribe in late April, clearing the way for state legislative action.
"Probably the biggest component of the agreement is that it provides compensation to acquire and develop new land for tribal members who wish to live a safer distance from the plant," Reint says. "It will also help with emergency management procedures on an ongoing basis, which includes the casino located on the reservation and several hundred tribal members who live there. It also includes research looking into any possible links between the power plants, the nuclear waste storage site, power lines and health issues that exist on the island."
Many younger members of the tribe wish to move, Bennett says.
"There are elders who say they were born and raised down there, our dead are buried there, and they would never leave Prairie Island no matter what," Bennett says. "Then you’ve got the 20-somethings, the 30-somethings who – knowing all that they know now – would like the opportunity to relocate to an area that’s farther away from the plant and still have that sense of community."
The agreement was bittersweet, Bennett acknowledges.
"You know negotiations are give and take – this is the best I could do for the people of Prairie Island for now," she says. "Some kind of compensation is better than none, and the tribe has received nothing all these years. At least that’s money that we can put away for the future."
"Even if the plant were to close tomorrow, there still is all this nuclear waste," Reint points out. "And politically, either they get nothing, or they get something with the caveat of keeping the plants going the next 10 years, at least. In a perfect world, we would never have to worry about nuclear waste again. This makes a bad situation more manageable."
As part of the deal, the tribe agreed to remain silent on the prospect of relicensing until such time as Xcel might request it.
The 1994 legislation that authorized dry-cask storage on Prairie Island also mandated gradual decreased reliance on nuclear power, Hamilton says.
"It’s actually the official policy of the state of Minnesota that we’re going to transition away from nuclear power," she says. "We know it’s not going to happen overnight and we’re not advocating shutting plants down until there are viable substitutes. But I don’t think we need to know 100 percent how we’re going to get completely nuclear-free. We need to say, what is our next big energy decision? And then we need to say, are we making the cleanest possible decision for future generations?"
Hamilton says that Minnesota, like the country as a whole, gets about 20 percent of its power from nuclear energy.
"What you’re looking at is eventually replacing long-term about 20 percent of the power. Studies done by our federal Department of Energy have said that we could easily, at low cost, get to 20 percent renewable energy in about 20 years."
Hamilton says that for 10 years, ME3 has been on record supporting compensation for the Mdewakanton. They have also been working with the Labor Institute, a national think tank on labor issues, to help address workers’ concerns.
"If you look at labor statistics for who’s working in nuclear power plants, the number of employees is declining, because power plants are becoming more mechanized," she says. " We are very interested in people who have good labor jobs in power plants and finding ways to help them make a transition to a job at the same or higher level of pay."
Hamilton expresses skepticism about the timing of Xcel’s appeal for authorization of more storage casks.
"I think Xcel looked at the politics of the election and they thought, boy, we can get whatever we want from this particular legislature and governor."
Along with increased storage capacity, one of the things Xcel wanted – and achieved –was the transfer of authority over nuclear waste regulation from the state legislature to the Public Utilities Commission (PUC).
"I think Xcel views that as a direct path for relicensing of the three nuclear reactors in Minnesota – the two at Prairie Island and the one in Monticello," said Michael Noble, executive director of ME3. "Minnesota was the only state in the union that had state legislative authority over the operation of nuclear power plants. Our opponents used that as evidence that Minnesota was kind of far-out, but I think it’s a good thing for the citizens of the state to have accountability over something as risky as nuclear power."
After initially pushing for adherence to the 17-cask storage limit, ME3 conceded that the plants could run to the end of their licenses, and focused on maintaining legislative authority.
Noble considers the transfer of control to the PUC the worst feature of the bill that was finally passed during a special session of the Minnesota legislature, after a series of earlier versions fell by the wayside. The other regrettable provision, he says, simplifies the regulatory process for a coal gasification plant in northern Minnesota.
But Noble says the bill was not all bad news.
"There were several good provisions in the bill," he says. "Number one, all the electric companies in Minnesota are supposed to add 10 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2015 – and Xcel is required to. Xcel is about half the electricity in the state, about 1100 megawatts. That’s about a $1 billion investment in renewable energy – and primarily windpower – in Minnesota.
"Another good thing is a special program to provide financial incentives for farmers and small rural businesses to own their own wind turbines. So it’s not just big national and international wind developers that will develop windpower in Minnesota."
Beyond that, Xcel will double its contribution to a renewable development fund, which will be administered by a separate nonprofit. Also, there is funding for a think tank at the University of Minnesota to work on producing hydrogen from renewable sources.
Noble was encouraged by a speech given by Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty during the legislative debate, which he describes as "pro-environment, pro-renewable-energy, pro-efficiency." Pawlenty also spoke out in favor of retaining the legislature’s authority over nuclear power plants.
"I was very disappointed that the governor accepted a bill that did not meet what he called his minimum expectations," Noble says. "But in fairness to him, he helped us make a very, very bad bill much better. So in that I see a seed for bi-partisan partnership on improving our state’s energy future."
Wanda Copeland, rector of Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Elk River, Minn., and a member of the Diocese of Minnesota’s Environmental Stewardship Commission, says that while the church did not take a specific stand with regard to the Prairie Island legislation, the Commission has been working to raise awareness of the need for clean energy alternatives.
"We’ve tried to say, let’s get churches and church members on board with at least proclaiming that, as people of faith, we feel like there needs to be more green power in the mix. It seems like that should be a non-issue, but it is a pretty big task. I was at a congregation two or three weeks ago, and out of maybe 400 or 500 members I got three or four people who said, this is great. And out of that, I got maybe two who will sign up for green energy. So we are not making huge strides."
Copeland is sympathetic to the Prairie Island Indian Community’s predicament.
"The agreement with Xcel Energy is not only to store more nuclear casks on that site, but to allow them to buy land so that they don’t have to live next to the nuclear power plant. How could you in good conscience want to turn down an offer like that?"
The Mdewakanton will continue to reap the consequences of past energy choices, despite the minimal compensation they will now receive.
"It’s really probably a no-win situation for the Dakota people," Buffalohead says. "You have a site that has spiritual significance that, in my opinion, is destroyed. You build a nuclear power plant there, you’ve wrecked it – you can’t clean that mess up.
"It’s just the latest example of the native community paying the price for energy. Nobody wants a nuclear plant by them, so they tend to end up in places where reservations are. Look at the damming of rivers in this country for hydro-electric power. If you look at all those dams on the Missouri River, they have had a huge impact on the flooding of Indian reservations. It’s the same thing in the Pacific Northwest, in Washington, Oregon, British Columbia, the James Bay project, the Cree in Manitoba."
Buffalohead is on the Advisory Committee of Just Energy, a project of ME3 which works to raise awareness of the problems caused by Manitoba Hydro in Canada, which sells energy to Xcel. Severe flooding from the dam has caused major disruption in the lives of the Pimicikamak Cree who live there.
Buffalohead says that the project was built with promises of economic benefits for the tribe, but that environmental devastation has outweighed any economic gain.
"There are a few jobs that a few people have, but the quality of life has gone down from what it was 25 years ago," he says. "What you see is a community that before the development of the hydro was probably considered to be a poorer community, but they had a lot of natural resources that they could supplement their lives with. That’s ruined now.
"And that’s the same all over northern Canada. You see people who were poor but could supplement their earnings with hunting and fishing and gathering. These hydro-electric projects have ruined that. They’ve wiped out the animal populations, they’ve poisoned the water. Statistically, their per capita income may be higher. But you don’t have to be a genius to figure out that they’re not better off."
Just Energy was established after Cree leaders traveled to Minnesota to appeal to Xcel’s customers there.
"A number of elders drove down to Minneapolis a couple of years ago," Hamilton says. "They wanted to make Xcel’s ratepayers aware of the fact that we were getting hydropower, and hydropower was causing significant socio-economic dislocation and problems for their community. It was news to us – we hadn’t heard about these issues. To get down to Minneapolis from where they live in northern Manitoba they followed the power lines down. It’s very visceral evidence."
Just Energy has initiated a campaign asking Xcel consumers to withhold a symbolic $5 from their energy payment each month, to pressure Xcel to demand greater responsibility from Manitoba Hydro toward the Cree.
Buffalohead says that in Minnesota, 28 percent of the energy that Xcel sells comes from either its Prairie Island plant or from Manitoba Hydro.
"Native Americans are 1 percent of the population in the U.S., and in Canada their population is relatively small, too," he says. "But we’re paying the price for 28 percent of the energy."
Prairie Island Indian Community www.prairieisland.org
Minnesotans for an Energy Efficient Economy (ME3) www.me3.org
Diocese of Minnesota Environmental Stewardship Commission