THE BOATRIGHT REPORT- An Open Back Road Guide to The American Experience & Culture
By: Charles W. Boatright, President of THE GREAT QATSPY® Company
Climate Change Science or Political Science? Climate Warming Now the Narrative is Climate Change that has been occurred since earth was the 3rd Rock from the Sun
The Fires that occurred in Maui, Hawaii are without words an tragic situation that has left an endurable impact on the people of Maui where fire destroyed entire families, lives, homes, business, and the way of life for those residents and businesses. BUT this could have been avoided if vegetation management by the utility was in place for the least the past 10- years, or 2- five year cycles.
I’ve been a grid engineer in transmission Hi-line work since September 17th, 1981, working both line design, management and field operations that includes working with both line and vegetation crews. Eighty-five percent (85%) of all outages were due to vegetation; the other 15% were due to equipment failure, lightning strikes, equipment contact by independent operators, crop dusters, contamination, and other causes.
Importance of Vegetation Line Maintenance
Vegetation outages included trees falling from off the right-or-way that accounted for (99.98%) of the vegetation outages, as shown in the featured image above. Vegetation outages from the floor accounted for (less than 0.02%). The reason floor outages were so rare was that we mowed the right-of-way on a cycle of about every 5-years and we did aerial patrols four times a year, once a quarter. That was about 550- flight hours per year of aerial patrols. Occasionally we have lightning from severe thunderstorms that cause the insulators to fail, dropping the conductor to the ground that causes fires in extreme dry weather to occur.
The dry weather conditions that occurred from time-to-time would also compromise the grounding system that caused the lightning to not be dissipated quick enough into the ground where the grounding system helped to avoid damage to the structure. We probably monitor the weather as intensely as any meteorologist does with a television station, numbering and tracking each storm and even storm and lightning patterns where we could improve ground in those areas.
We also tracked tornadoes that followed certain tracks (east-to-northeast) where we could predict what towns were be impacted based on historical structure damage we had gathered. The topography of the land helped to steered the track of these severe thunderstorm cells that produce these tornadoes. When it comes to hurricanes, the north east quadrant was what we called the dirty quadrant, because where tornadoes would spin up from. I have worked 38- hurricanes including Andrew, Katrina, and Rita.
We had a program that we would used where we could detect the location and magnitude of the lightning strike anywhere within our 4-state system (that included- Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas). We could measure magnitude of any lightning strikes in this area if we had a specific time that was based on when the relays operated. Some lightning strikes that we measured had magnitudes over 130 kA, that is a huge value where you could expect line damage usually to insulators.
Our Engineering and Construction Procedures were based on decades of Scientific Best Practices over 50- Years of Line Work
Our transmission work was based on decades of refined engineering/science where we could maintain first and foremost safety for the public, but also reliability to our customers where the electrical grid is as important not just for residential use only but for commercial manufacturing and agriculture use for economic stability of a communities.
All this takes funding to maintain and any de-funding of any component of this process causes severe consequences, especially in vegetation clearing. We were always having to educate upper management and government officials to why de-funding vegetation and line maintenance had severe consequences.
We would stressed cutting the vegetation and transmission maintenance budgets had far reaching consequences that we could never recover from in a short turnaround. Not just in reliability, but also for the public safety in causing outages, disruption to system integrity, and also fires that usually occur in a remote areas like in a forest. Our system grid was heavily agriculture and timber, especially in Arkansas, Louisiana, and here in Mississippi.
The People of Maui Surfer from the Lack of Line and Vegetation Maintenance
Unfortunately, the residents of Maui had to surfer from the neglect of the vegetation funds being shifted to fund what the utility upper management and government officials thought would have less impact on the environment. That was a deadly course of action for them to take. This type of management usually reflect lack of experience in upper management that usually did come up through the ranks, but managers hired with business degrees. Every decision that we make has consequences, just make sure you are aware of the magnitude of those consequences.
The utility decision ended up to be proven to be the wrong course of action to take with devastating consequences. Maui might not be the only location where vegetation clearing was neglected. This incident might only be one of others areas that was neglected. That is due to lack of experience of upper management and the Hawaii government. In the coming days and months of investigations that will be conducted, there will be utility workers that patrol these lines previously that had sounded the alarm of the vegetation issues, especially on the floor of the right-of-way. In every catastrophic incident there were warnings signs ignored, that even goes back to Three-Mile Island disaster.
Conservation and Environmental Measures Used
We also worked with hunters, conservationist, and environmental agencies on what we could do to benefit them in their planting food plots, controlling erosion, and providing a healthy environment for wildlife. Our right-of-ways provided excellent grazing areas for wildlife like deer and even turkeys. Below, is a photograph that I took on September 28, 2011, of how hunters are making use of the right-of-way with the deer stand on the edge of the right-of-way. The right-of-way in most cases remain the property of the landowner.
The other reason that floor outages were so rare was the employment policy that we had in place that really had severe consequences. It was called future employment. My aerial patrol that I flew were critical to make sure that I caught everything flying at 50 knots (~57 MPH). If there was a floor outage to a line that ranged between 69kV to 500 kV, the vegetation manager and I would need to start looking for another career path, because one of us would be fired. With incentives like that, we knew how important vegetation management and line patrol was. In addition to being Grid Engineer of the Transmission Grid in Mississippi, I also flew aerial patrol in a rotor wing or helicopter.
It is always tempting to cut the vegetation budget to fund other pet projects like renewable power like solar and wind projects that only accounts for 14% of base load.
But remember this about solar and wind power, to be considered a reliable base load, the power source has to be at least 40% or higher to be consider a reliable power source for the grid. Solar and wind presently accounts for about 14% of our base load needs. That could not sustain energy needs without rolling power outages, brown outs, or cascading outages to the system grid. Nuclear, and natural gas are the most reliable power sources for energy production that are clean. We as a nation hadn’t built a nuclear power unit since 1980’s. We in Mississippi had the fortune to buy a number of natural power power plants in the early 2000’s. This was a great deal for Mississippi’s consumers.
The Analysis- So is it Science of the Climate OR Political Science
Whatever your faith is or the lack thereof, it remains a FACT that our earth started out as a 3rd Rock from the sun without form or substance approximately 4.543 Billion years ago. During that time we have had ice ages, droughts, cooling and warming cycles, floods, and volcanoes eruptions with and without mankind being on the earth.
We at one time had danseuses roaming the earth that became extinct with what was believed to be two meteorite impacts in two locations- one in the Gulf of Mexico and the other in the Antarctica region. We also had volcanic eruptions that changed the climate and topography with ash and lava that formed the Islands of Hawaii. Volcanoes eruptions even caused droughts to occur in ancient Egypt in 2200 B.C. These are all natural occurrences that man has little to do with on their impact. We need to remember that we didn’t started out as a green lush planet those 4.543 Billion years ago, we were just a rock.
The Dust Bowl of 1930
But let’s look at The Dust Bowl of 1930 when we only had 23 million registered vehicles on the road, or what could have been classified as dirt roads back then with ruts. There was a quote back then that stated- Choose our ruts carefully, because you’re going to be in them for the long haul. This quote could be applied to our environmentalist on not taking a balance objective approach to energy production that has cost Maui a tremendous cost of life.
The Dust Bowl of 1930 occurred right after the start of the Depression in October of 1929 that left farms with waste land. It was so dry and dust with windy conditions caused someone walking too close to a barbed wire fence that could draw a static arc from off the barbed wire fence, especially on wooden post. Here in Mississippi, we recorded one of our hottest temperatures of 115 degrees Fahrenheit on July 29, 1930. So are hot temperatures NEW? They aren’t.
Since the Dust Bowl of 1930 through 1936, we started a conservation program for better farming practices that wouldn’t leave the land deprived of nutrients like it did in the late 1920’s. If you read the Old Testament, farmers were instructed to leave their their land unpainted to rest and regain their nutrients on the seventh (7th) year. George Washington Carver researched the value of planting peanuts to enrich the soils.
Natural Climate Changes
So our earth has always been and will be going through climate changes with or without the presence of people walking the face of the earth. For those concerned about our forest, we have more trees now than in the 1800’s with good forest management. The fires that burnt Yellowstone in 1988 had beneficial results, because it opened up the tree canopy to allow natural grasses to thrive for wildlife to feed on and for those wonderful wildflowers.
Nature is more powerful than anything humans can do that can also recover, just consider hurricanes. Do I want to eliminate and recycle waste from our environment, most certainly. I would like to see us go to a hydrogen fuel source. As an Environmental Engineer and Civil Engineer, we prepared Environmental Impact Statements on all our projects in order to supply reliable energy to our communities and have the least impact on the environment. Electricity has changed people’s life more than any other development where their work isn’t backbreaking and people had little hope of enjoying retirement because of the manual labor.
It was due to hurricanes that allowed the French Navy in September of 1781 to come to the aid of General George Washington at Yorktown. This was because of the threat of hurricanes in the Caribbean where the French Navy was providing protection from privates for their merchant ships. The French also wouldn’t want to past up an opportunity to eliminate a large part of the British Navy at the same time. The French provided much needed assistance to the American Revolution. The hurricane season allowed the French to withdraw from the Caribbean and play a major role in the American Revolution War.
We even went to the extent to design slopes where they didn’t cause erosion and planted grasses and did stabilization mitigation work to preserve the surrounding areas and waterways. We work with conservationist and hunters to provide a better environment for them. Hunting is a necessity for the health of the herbs. We here in Mississippi have even established hunting seasons for alligators and wild hogs to manage the alligator and wild hog population.
So the Main Point of Responsible Management
So the main point is that Climate change is a cycle of nature that has been occurring since we were the 3rd Rock from the sun without form. Vegetation Management is an important part of our forest, wildlife, and safety and the function of utilities. For 33- years until I retired, I knew the importance of line and vegetation management and the repercussions of not having proactive vegetation and line management programs in place. Below was a photograph of me working the last month before I retired at age 57. I designed a horizontal life line for our linemen to use that I was field testing. The next photograph was a vertical life line that I also developed and designed that I was installing.
