Shady Surveys = Skewed Stories

Sometimes the special interests get a little carried away with themselves, especially when the young folks who work there think they're saving the world.  The progressive left is still trying to find a way to make transmission lines "less bad" for landowners so that they will happily accept them.

NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN!

I was recently contacted by a gal representing shady far left groups who think paying bribes to community members unaffected by new transmission projects is going to be the solution to transmission opposition. Save your effort.  It doesn't work.  And... as if I would help 

The World Resources Institute
and 
Data for Progress 

with anything at all.

And it went like this:

On behalf of research teams at Data for Progress and World Resources Institute, I’m reaching out to ask if you would be willing to participate in a 30-min or 45-min confidential recorded interview to answer questions about your experiences with community engagement and transmission infrastructure projects. The opportunity to learn from your expertise with the PATH project would be a particularly valuable contribution to our research. 

We are inviting advocates both for and against transmission projects, policymakers, developers, community organizations, and other key stakeholders to these discussions. In the interview, we hope to learn about your familiarity with and views of community engagement efforts around transmission development, including what you view as working well or as areas for improvement. 
These interviews are part of a larger research project designed to examine barriers and opportunities for transmission deployment, including a specific focus on community engagement and understanding the role that community benefits (and tools like community benefits agreements) could potentially play in addressing some of these challenges, or if not, what their shortcomings are. We plan to synthesize what we learn from these interviews into a report which will also include evidence from case studies, focus groups, and survey data.
 
We would be grateful for the opportunity to include valuable insights from your unique expertise in our research. Your interview responses will be confidential and nothing you say will be attributed to you or your organization. Please reach out if you have any questions about the interview format.


If you’d like to participate in this interview, please let us know, and we would be delighted to set up a 30-min or 45-min Zoom discussion in the next few weeks.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Does this deserve a response?  Not really, but I wanted to have a little fun.

I’m not sure how I can help you with your project.  How many actual transmission opponents are you interviewing?  The fact of the matter is that once a transmission project is sited on private property, the impacted property owner will oppose it.  It doesn’t matter how many “benefits” the government or the transmission owner want to shower on others in the community who are NOT impacted.  For instance, if a transmission line is sited in my back yard and I will have to live with it in perpetuity, it doesn’t matter much to me if somebody wants to fund a new park across town, or in an adjacent community that is not impacted at all.  Community “benefits” are nothing more than a bribe to buy the advocacy of unaffected persons.  It doesn’t make the landowner whole.  “Benefits” to people who are not impacted do nothing to change opposition and only create arguments and bad feelings in local communities.  I wouldn’t throw my neighbor under the bus for my own personal gain, and I hope you wouldn’t either.

Maybe you should change your polling questions to ask people if they support a transmission line ACROSS THEIR OWN PROPERTY that will use eminent domain to take the land if the landowner refuses.  Or if a landowner is willing to sacrifice his home for the “benefit” of people who are sacrificing nothing for the effort.

The only opinions that matter here are the ones of impacted persons.

Have a great day!

P.S.  Transmission opponents are unlikely to give away our strategy to dark money transmission advocacy groups.

Perky young gal was undeterred.  

Thank you for your thoughtful response. I completely understand if you do not wish to participate in this research project. Thank you for sharing your perspective. I respect the time you spent writing this reply and wanted to provide more context to you about this work. 

As an independent non-profit research organization, we hope to present a balanced view of challenges and shortcomings when it comes to how companies have approached transmission development, as well as opportunities to ensure that landowners have a meaningful say in these projects, including when that means organizing to stop them or to improve the conditions under which they do get built. We are representing a variety of perspectives across nearly 100 participants in our interview and focus group research, and have invited transmission opponents to participate in these interviews ranging from directly impacted landowners to county commissioners that have spoken out against projects. Our research included focus groups with rural landowners to understand their views on the important questions that you raise -- such as how they would feel about transmission infrastructure being built across their own property and their views on the use of eminent domain. You make valid points we've also heard during our research about the perceptions of benefits and their limitations, which will inform the analysis in our report. 

In case it is of interest to you, we are also conducting 15-20 minute anonymous surveys as part of this project. We'd welcome your response if you would want to participate in this in lieu of an interview, but we also respect your decision to decline participation in the project. 

Once again, I wanted to thank you for your time and the care you put into your reply. Have a wonderful weekend!

Their research included focus groups with rural landowners to understand their views on the important questions that I raised -- such as how they would feel about transmission infrastructure being built across their own property and their views on the use of eminent domain?

How many actual rural landowners went willingly to a focus group held by these far left groups?  How much were they paid, and were they told the truth about who was paying for the focus group and how their participation would be used?  I doubt it.  It never is with focus groups.  If there's so much lying going on at these groups, who could trust the results?  The ones who paid for the focus group want to use the knowledge gained to skew public opinion.  

Right.  With another biased "report" that promises throwing money at the transmission problem will solve it.  This problem can never be solved until transmission is properly buried on existing transportation rights of way and landowners are not victimized over and over again.

Do these groups know Biden isn't President any longer and they are not running the federal government anymore?  Who are they going to convince with their bogus reports?

Nobody.  

I suggest they redirect their grant money toward other important social dilemmas, like finding out why environmentalists are burning their Teslas and buying gas guzzlers.  Well, if they have any grant money left that is... ;-)