Montrose - Daily Press

Robert Allen

Daily Press Writer

MONTROSE — Candidates for the 2007 Delta-Montrose Electric Association election expressed their opinions regarding such issues as renewable energy and a contract extension with the association’s power provider this week through e-mails, phone interviews and face-to-face discussions.

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Election ballots will be mailed next week, allowing DMEA members the opportunity to decide who fills three of the nine seats on the cooperative’s board.

In District 1, Michael Sramek runs unopposed. This district includes the west Montrose area.

In District 2, Kenneth Byers challenges incumbent Ed Marston for his seat on the DMEA board. This district includes Paonia and extends east and north to include part of Cedaredge and part of the southern slope of the Grand Mesa.

In District 3, candidates Tony Prendergast and Kathleen Welt vie for the service territory covering a portion of the North Fork area, including Hotchkiss and Crawford and extending south to Montrose County, east of the city of Montrose.

District 3

Prendergast worked many years for the forest service as a ranger and lives on a ranch near Crawford. He’s building a home for his family that’s straw-bale, which means the walls are insulated with bales of straw. It is also designed to be passive solar.

Prendergast said he would like to see renewable energies developed on the Western Slope.

“I would really like to develop some of the local renewable energy potential that we have around here,” he said, “and I think that we have it — it’s an untapped resource that if we develop it could help provide some real stimulation in our rural economies and I guess all that is what excites me.”

He mentioned possibilities in the realms of solar and biomass energies, but said he believes hydroelectric power has the “greatest near-term potential.”

“You go to build a coal-fired power plant, you gotta build the whole plant at once and it’s incredibly expensive,” he said. “You gotta borrow a lot of money to do that. The possibility of developing smaller scale hydropower is that you could do it project by project, without real large expenses up front.”

With regard to DMEA’s decision not to sign a contract extension with Tri-State Generation and Transmission, its power provider, Prendergast said he supports the board.

“I support that — I think they’re doing the right thing with that. They see that there are opportunities to develop alternative energy generation sources locally and the contract with Tri-State has a cap on that. It’s a limitation. So that’s definitely part of it,” he said. “Tri-State hasn’t shown that their proposal really is in the best interest of local members.”

Prendergast is no stranger to boards. In fact, he currently sits on the Western Organization of Resource Councils, Saddle Mountain Ditch Company and Western Colorado Congress. He was formerly the president of the Black Canyon Land Trust.

He said the DMEA board would be most important.

Prendergast said he feels his perspective, coupled with being an open-minded, pragmatic long-term thinker, set him apart in this race. “My perspective is maybe a little bit unique — I’m just a real middle class person but I guess I haven’t always lived in the mainstream so I see solutions sometimes that I think other people are a little less aware of or open to.”

Prendergast said he thinks this will be a competitive race and that he would like to see a good number of DMEA members get involved and make informed decisions.

“Energy matters these days and we’ve been able to take cheap energy for granted for many decades now,” he said. “And from what we can see just in rising rates and rising fuel costs (is) that that’s not necessarily the case now, and we need people to be informed and to make choices and to all plug in this together to help shape an energy future that will be sustainable and keep our economies plugging along.”

Welt competes with Prendergast for the District 3 seat. She has lived in the Hotchkiss and Paonia area for more than 25 years and works as an environmental compliance, health and safety professional for coal and natural gas development industries.

She said her experience has led her always to look at both sides of an issue and gather as much information as possible before making a decision.

“You certainly have to have a lot of data available, be willing to get out there and gather that data, weigh and assess that information and then make sure that you’re looking at both sides — if you will — of that issue,” she said. “And I think through my 25 years of that work in the Western Slope in Delta County, in the North Fork specifically, I’ve gained a lot of experience in dealing with differing opinions.”

With regard to the Tri-State contract, Welt said it could certainly use some revision.

“I support encouraging Tri-State to expand their contract, revise their contract, whatever they want to call it to allow DMEA and others within the Tri-State family to be more efficient with and effective with their energy portfolio,” she said. “I definitely believe the coal-fire power is important and part of that mix. And as economic renewable alternative energies are available, they need to be looked at.”

She mentioned her dismay regarding Tri-State’s cap of 5 percent of power allowed into the grid through outside sources such as renewables.

“I don’t believe that Tri-State is out there looking out for the most costly energy and then wanting to pass that along to us, but certainly there’s other people and other ideas that might be able to fit, and right now they don’t have the flexibility to contract with Tri-State — so I think they need to work on that.”

Welt said with regard to the potential of renewables on the Western Slope that she would like to see methane energy become a key player, as it is a plentiful byproduct of coal mining and natural gas. She said it’s a shame that because methane is carbon based, it is not considered a renewable under current legislation.

She also said it’s important not to rush into things when integrating renewable energy.

“It has to be economic. It has to be efficient. Just to go out there and say ‘Oh, we’re doing renewables’ just because it’s the current fad or it’s the greatest public relations kind of thing to do, to me isn’t the best thing for the members of DMEA because along with that comes a cost that we may be able to avoid with a more efficient, more economic source,” she said.

Welt said burning traditional energy resources in a cleaner fashion is also important.

District 2

Byers said he takes the common sense approach into this race.

“I don’t claim to have any bag of new tricks or know anything special,” Byers said. He said he intends to “make sure the customers with DMEA are not gonna get stuck with a high electric bill.”

With regard to the Tri-State contract, he says we need to be careful.

“I’m not real positive on that. We gotta be careful where we don’t just rule out coal until we have something better at hand — and I just don’t like the idea that were gonna try to do coal in before we have anything else at hand,” he said.

“I know there’s alternative methods for generating electricity, but a lot of times they’re not cheaper for the consumer. I want to make sure that whatever we do, we don’t hurt the consumers.”

He said renewables do need to be explored but that “I don’t want to cut off the supply to electricity for something we hope will work.”

Marston has lived in Paonia 33 years and served on the DMEA board for several terms.

He said several factors have caused him to be reluctant with regard to signing the contract extension with Tri-State.

“Most recently, the DMEA board voted to not sign a 10-year extension of the contract that binds us to Tri-State. We have guaranteed power for the next 33 years, which should be enough time to wean ourselves from this expensive supplier,” Marston said in an e-mail. “Where will DMEA’s power come from in 2040, if not sooner? I believe that DMEA will eventually be able to buy all its power locally from sawmills burning waste wood, dairies generating electricity from cow manure, and irrigation companies using the power of falling water.”

He also said that last year more than $30 million left Delta and Montrose counties to pay for power from Tri-State, and that the supplier’s rates have risen more than 40 percent in the past five years.

Contact Robert Allen via e-mail at roberta@montrosepress.com

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