Dear Board of Commissioners:
I want to thank the Board again for how you have been willing to judiciously weigh in on matters pertaining to the County’s electric grid and underground water, as the Michigan Constitution gives you authority.
This past week there was a public hearing on the Campbell wastewater plan, even as you had appropriately requested. In follow up to that, I recommend the Board take this additional step: request the EPA and EGLE strongly consider treatment of the Campbell wastewater for industrial re-use, rather than its injection underground. As a matter of general policy, we should seek to treat and reuse wastes, including such wastewater, rather than burying it as is and hoping for the best. I would especially suggest investigation that a significant portion of that bulk wastewater be treated for use in both a co-located data center’s cooling system, plus perhaps other ones, and for other commercial purposes. Data centers in Arizona and Virginia use reclaimed municipal wastewater, so there is precedence for using wastewater in data centers. AI financial analyses I ran actually indicate this approach would be less expensive than underground injection, and it would certainly be less environmentally risky and wasteful. There is huge need for water in data center cooling systems, so we should not be stressing our water supply when we could instead re-use wastewater. This was my recommendation at the public hearing.
I also would reiterate my requests that the county board pass the following resolutions:
- To become a party in the Silver Maple Solar case in Zeeland Township, opposing the large industrial solar development which replaces valuable farmlands with an unreliable form of baseload electric generation in Michigan. The Michigan Court of Appeals’ recent decision regarding who must be notified as the Affected Local Unit (ALU) in a proposed industrial solar project gives Ottawa County an opportunity to step in and become a party in this case. The county has expertise in the very issues this project impacts—roads, drainage, water resources, agriculture, and long-term land use. This matters because Ottawa County is the third-largest agricultural producing county in Michigan by market value. The proposed project would take approximately 1,900 acres of productive farmland out of agricultural production for decades. Protecting one of our county’s greatest resources isn’t just a township issue—it’s a county issue.
- Join as a county board, just as many township boards in the county are already represented, the exploratory committee for a locally controlled electric cooperative. This is our best window of opportunity to pursue more local control of our electric grid, given the newly formed Office of Energy Dominance Financing under the Federal Department of Energy. To pursue this successfully, we need to display the same level of public support for this as was displayed in the request to delay the Campbell closure. A locally elected electric cooperative board for those parts of Ottawa County currently under Consumers Energy control would not preclude using Consumers Energy to help service our grid, but it would give us more local control of what Consumers Energy and other parties do, at a time our electric grid is under intense pressure given the push for Net Zero and data centers. At the end of the day, this effort really will amount to giving local voters the opportunity to decide whether they want to stay with the Consumers Energy status quo, or whether they want electricity policy under a locally elected electric cooperative board to ensure local interests are protected first and foremost.
We will be living with what happens with our area electric grid and water, so it behooves us to pursue more local control and action relating to them.
Thank you for your public service and your consideration of these requests.
Sincerely,
Joseph Parnell McCarter
Volunteer leader of SaveTheCampbell.com
Georgetown Township, MI