Public Service Commission race has grid-focused incumbent challenged by a water protector
Public Service commissioner candidates Randy Christmann, left, Republican, and Tracey Wilkie, Democratic-NPL Party candidate. (Contributed)
The North Dakota Public Service Commission is handling one of its highest-profile cases in recent history in the Summit Carbon Solutions pipeline, but it's the electrical grid that incumbent Commissioner Randy Christmann sees as a major concern.
"We are on the verge of collapsing," Christmann said in an interview with the North Dakota Monitor. "We have got to make sure the renewable developers are paying their share of the cost of getting them hooked up and all the new transmission it's costing without adding additional costs to the users."
Christmann, a Republican and the chair of the three-person commission, is up for reelection. He is being challenged by Democratic-NPL candidate Tracey Wilkie.
Wilkie has made her position on the Summit pipeline clear.
"I don't agree with taking waste from five states," Wilkie said, "I don't like North Dakota being used as an environmental sacrifice zone, and, in my opinion, that's happening."
The project by Iowa-based Summit would capture carbon emissions from ethanol plants in five states. The carbon dioxide would be sent by pipeline to western North Dakota for permanent underground storage.
Wilkie testified this summer at a Public Service Commission hearing in Wahpeton on the Summit Carbon Solutions pipeline project. She also participated in a rally against the project outside the state Capitol in Bismarck. The rally was organized by the Dakota Resource Council.
Christmann voted against a permit for the Summit pipeline project last year, but the PSC agreed to let Summit revise its application. Another vote could be coming soon but may not come until after the election.
Christmann has not yet committed to how he will vote. "I'm still digging through piles of notes," Christmann said of the extensive hearing process and numerous filing in the case.
"We like to get things cleared out and off of our desk as quickly as possible, but we have to establish the complete record, or someone will appeal, and the courts will send it back to us, and then it's even slower," Christmann said.
Wilkie said she also is concerned about North Dakota receiving cobalt and nickel mine waste from Minnesota, should projects advance in that state.
Christmann is a rancher in the Hazen area who previously served in the North Dakota Senate for 18 years. He was first elected to the PSC in 2012 and reelected in 2018.
He says the grid issue goes beyond North Dakota. The state is part of two regional authorities on power transmission — the Southwest Power Pool and the Midcontinent Independent System Operator.
"We have a vote and a chance to be persuasive within both the regional transmission organizations that are in North Dakota," Christmann said.
All three members of the PSC are Republicans — Christmann, Sheri Haugen-Hoffart and Julie Fedorchak, who is running for North Dakota's U.S. House seat.
Wilkie calls herself a "much-needed voice of moderation" on the three-person panel.
"A vote for me is a vote for all of us instead of just the one party," she said.
She calls herself a water protector and land defender. She is concerned about how North Dakota's recent wildfires will affect groundwater.
Wilkie, of Fargo, is a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa and grew up on the reservation.
Much of her professional career was spent working on criminal justice reform in Oregon, where she also was active in a labor union.
She said that experience gave her skilling negotiating and conflict resolution that she could use in a role on the PSC.
Since returning to North Dakota, she has worked as a day-laborer, saying she likes the variety and flexibility that allows her to focus on other projects, such as campaigning.
She advocates for the transition away from fossil fuels, which supplies much of the baseload energy in North Dakota, to renewable energy.
She also wants to keep utility rates low for consumers and is frustrated by rate hikes in an energy-rich state.
"I believe North Dakotans should be looking out for our own people here," Wilke said.
"Why does ours have to go up so much?"
Both candidates said that data centers, which require huge amounts of energy, are concerning. Using North Dakota's excess of natural gas, a byproduct of oil production, to generate electricity could help supply the power. However, transmission — the grid — is still a concern for maintaining reliability and affordability.
"If North Dakota can find a good use for more of the natural gas that comes along with our oil, it certainly adds a lot of great opportunities for North Dakota," Christmann said. "However, a lot of the folks pushing this the hardest do not seem very focused on the impact that has on the grid."
