Arizona Utility just won’t allow this historic black community – Mother Jones

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the climate desk Cooperation.

A hand full weary residents gathered at Randolph’s windowless church to reflect on an electric utility’s recent effort to expand its power plant — a polluting gas-fired facility adjacent to the community that the state regulator has blocked on environmental and health grounds.

A historic black community in central Arizona flanked by railroads and heavy hazardous industries, Randolph is a small dusty place where residents are exposed to the state’s worst air quality while lacking basic amenities like fire hydrants, garbage disposal and health care.

Last year, the community celebrated a historic victory when state regulators rejected a proposal by public utility Salt River Project (SRP) to more than double the size of its power plant, ruling that doing so would and would not cause further harm to Randolph residents in the public interest.

It was a major victory for clean energy and environmental justice in Arizona, according to the Sierra Club, the environmental group, which condemned the proposed expansion as “textbook environmental racism.”

But the SRP has refused to take no for an answer, and residents fear the state regulator could reverse their decision. “We won, they lost, but they won’t accept it and they keep coming back. That’s not democratic,” said Ron Jordan, 77, whose family has lived in Randolph since the 1930s. “They dangle treats in front of us, but the community doesn’t want that, we already have too much pollution. That is not right.”

At a recent community meeting held at the humble church, SRP offered to fund, among other things, a new community center, air quality monitoring, and $50,000 for landscaping and signage if residents gave up their opposition to the power plant expansion. “We don’t give up no matter what they offer,” said Guadalupe Felix, 45, whose family has lived in Randolph for three generations. “This plant will kill us, we’re already suffocating.”

According to David Pomerantz, director of the Energy and Policy Institute (EPI), the community says it won’t back down, but statewide energy providers have a track record of getting what they want. “Taking no for an answer is incredibly common.”

Randolph is a The unincorporated Pinal County town was first settled in the 1920s and ’30s by mostly black families from Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas who came to pick cotton in the Gila River Valley. It was one of the few places where black families could buy real estate, and by the 1960s the close-knit farming community, also home to Mexicans and Native Americans, boasted thriving shops, bars, churches, and gas stations.

The mechanization of the cotton industry led to the economic and demographic decline of the community, after which the nearby town of Coolidge began annexing the land around Randolph and turning it into an industrial area.

Today, only about 150 residents live in an area seven football fields long and three fields wide, some in houses or land bought from their ancestors. There is no shop, no bar, no gas station and no park, only the church with a single tall palm tree for shade.

The farm fields and desert plains where kids rode bikes and hunted roadrunners are long gone, and Randolph is now practically surrounded by polluting infrastructure, including gas plants, pipelines, a hazardous waste dump, and a steel company contracted to build Donald Trump’s border wall became.

The community is literally surrounded by cumulative and acute dangers.

According to the American Lung Association and the Environmental Protection Agency, Pinal County has some of the worst air pollution in Arizona. It is also bearing the brunt of the climate crisis, as persistent drought and water shortages are forcing farmers to leave fields fallow or sell them, many to solar farms. In August 2021, a gas line explosion threw Randolph residents out of their beds and ignited a massive fireball that killed farm worker Luis Alvarez and his 14-year-old daughter Valeria.

The ACC is the state utility regulator responsible for approving SRP’s power plants and transmission lines, as well as tariff increases and new energy projects for private power, water and telecommunications companies. Each state has a version of the ACC, most commonly referred to as the Public Utilities Commission (PUC).

As the community, the Sierra Club, and others organized against the plant expansion, SRP announced plans to fund paving, landscaping projects, and a scholarship and vocational training program, as well as an attempt to have Randolph recognized as a National Historic Site.

In April 2022, the ACC rejected SRP’s expansion plan after concluding that the utility company had not considered viable green energy alternatives, such as solar and battery storage, before expanding the power plant – which could adversely affect air quality, particularly for residents of Randolph would deteriorate who live next door. (The Commission rejected a recommendation by its Power Plant and Line Construction Committee to issue the environmental certificate.)

SRP requested a new hearing, which the ACC refused. The utility then filed a lawsuit in the Maricopa County Superior Court — and lost. “The [ACC] determined that the need for the proposed project is outweighed by its environmental impact. SRP has not established this decision as unlawful or unreasonable,” the court ruled in January 2023.

The ACC was is enshrined in the state constitution and, unlike PUCs in other states, is also responsible for the safety of railroads and pipelines, the incorporation of companies and the regulation of securities. In most states, PUC commissioners are appointed by the governor, but in a quarter of states, including Arizona, commissioners are directly elected by voters.

“Utilities typically try to get a new decision from a public body if they don’t like the original decision about a rate hike or a new gas plant. You will wait [for new commissioners] or try to bypass the commission altogether if they think lawmakers will be friendlier to their cause,” EPI’s Pomerantz said.

Last year, Indiana’s utility regulator (PUC) approved two new gas-fired power plants — three years after it rejected the utility’s original proposal because it didn’t adequately address renewable energy. In Virginia, state legislators, receiving sizeable donations from Dominion Energy, which is also a big spender in Washington, have recently attempted to pass legislation to increase the company’s permitted profit margin, despite households struggling to pay their bills.

According to an EPI analysis, utilities spend heavily on state politics, and during the 2020 election cycle, investor-owned utilities donated nearly $12 million to influential political organizations such as the Republican and Democratic governors and attorneys general. To get what they want from Congress, according to Open Secrets, utilities spent $347 million lobbying in Washington over the past three years, including $3.4 million from SRP affiliates.

Utility companies are known to have given large sums of money to influence campaigns in states with elected commissioners such as Georgia, Louisiana and Arizona.

In Arizona, the ACC is the primary government agency dealing with the climate crisis. In 2006, it established an energy standard that required energy suppliers to generate at least 15% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2025.

The ACC is among only a handful of partisan utility regulators, and four of the current five commissioners — including the two new members elected in January — are Republicans. Kevin Thompson, who worked for the state’s largest gas company for 17 years, and Nick Myers are both outspoken critics of the clean energy mandate.

Shortly after the Supreme Court judge sided with the ACC’s original decision blocking the plant expansion, the newly constituted commission allowed the SRP to reconsider its case and voted unanimously to resume talks with the utility.

Since then, the SRP has provided Randolph residents with a list of potential community investments and concessions should the expansion be approved. “This is a classic case of systemic racism, one of many communities across the country where corporations with money and power go to extremes to get what they want,” said Constance Jackson, NAACP Pinal District President. “It’s sad that the community has to go through this all over again because the decision has been made. It should not be back on the ACC agenda.”

JP Martin, an ACC spokesman, said: “There is a drastic misconception that SRP expansion is on everyone’s agenda at Coolidge. The Commission’s legal department is working with the legal team at SRP – that is all that is currently known.”

A spokesman for the utility said, “SRP continues to believe that the ACC Line Works Committee, which heard all witness testimony, toured the facility and toured the Randolph community, was correct in approving the proposed expansion… The Coolidge expansion project would need the Regulations comply with an air quality permit that limits emissions from the facility to levels that protect human health and the environment. The project is also in line with our commitment to clean energy and power grid transformation.

“SRP continues to seek a collaborative solution with the Randolph community that would provide a way forward, and we look forward to continuing to expand our relationship and partnership with the community.”

In Randolph, the residents are tired but not defeated. “I know it doesn’t seem like it now, but Randolph was a great place to grow up. This is our history and we are the voices of our ancestors, so this place is priceless to me,” said Kyle Muldrow, 53, an Army veteran and fourth-generation resident. “The ACC has made its decision, this should be over.”