At the Ottawa County Board meeting on 7/28/2026 at the 1:22:14 minute mark I delivered the following speech:
“Joseph Parnell McCarter, Georgetown Township, volunteer leader of “Save The Campbell”
I commend this Board for how you have judiciously weighed in on matters pertaining to the County’s electric grid and underground water, and request you continue to do so.
This past week there was a public hearing on the Campbell wastewater plan you had requested. Now I recommend the Board take the additional step of requesting the EPA strongly consider treatment of the Campbell wastewater for industrial re-use, rather than injection underground. As a matter of general policy, we should seek to treat and reuse wastes, including this wastewater, rather than burying it as is and hoping for the best. I would especially suggest investigation that a significant portion of the wastewater be treated for use in both a co-located data center’s cooling system, plus perhaps other ones. 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.
Second, I request the County Board 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.
Third, I request the County Board join the Exploratory Committee for a Locally Controlled Electric Cooperative, just as many township boards are already represented. This is our best 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 introduces alternative possibilities where now there is only monopoly. At the end of the day, this effort will amount to giving county voters the opportunity to decide whether we want our electric grid controlled by a locally elected electric cooperative board or Consumers Energy executives under MPSC control.
We will be living with what happens with our area electric grid and water, so it behooves us to pursue more local control. Cities in Ottawa County have already demonstrated how well local control over electric works.
Thanks for considering these requests and for your public service.”
At the 2:02:30 mark in the meeting there was an announcement by the Board Chair that the Board would likely be taking up the Silver Maple case in its coming Planning and Policy Committee meeting, and from there to the full Board. So it appears that request is in the pipeline, and we can be thankful for that.
We will continue to work and pray for these other requests, but we need citizen expressions of support similar to the support demonstrated in the Silver Maple case. We need to get local control of our electric grid so that outside interests untouched by our local realities do not control this vital area of our local lives and so we pursue a common-sense approach.