Issues of Cross Border Management of the Fraser Lowlands Eco-Region

This paper looks at a contentious power plant project Sumas Energy 2 – SE2 proposed for the US side of the international border between Abbotsford, BC, a rapidly growing town of over 100

Issues of Cross Border Management of the Fraser Lowlands Eco-Region

Patrick Buckley, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA and John Belec,

University College of the Fraser Valley, Abbotsford, BC

For presentation at CNS-ACSUS Convergence and Divergence Colloquium to be held at the Harbour

Centre Campus of Simon Fraser University (SFU) in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, on October 29-30, 2004

Abstract: As population pressure continues to mount on both sides of the border in the

approximately equally divided Fraser Lowlands Eco-Region, a variety of transborder management issues continue to surface not the least of them being co-management of a shared air shed This paper looks at a contentious power plant project (Sumas Energy 2 – SE2) proposed for the US side of the international border between Abbotsford, BC, a rapidly growing town of over 100,000, and Sumas, WA, a town of under 1,000 suffering decline since cross-border shopping slowed drastically in the 1990s In the late 19thcentury these two places represented a Cross Border Region (CBR), but with the coming

of the Canadian transcontinental railroad and frontier expansion of neighboring states they grew more separate, one in the west coast core of Canada the other on the American periphery We suggest that the current crisis in governing the Fraser Lowland,and its resolution, will be critical in shaping the framework and function of an emerging CBR This is discussed with reference to the CBR literature, and the growing presence ofCBRs globally

nation-Introduction

In 1999, Sumas Energy 2, Inc (SE2), a wholly owned subsidiary of National EnergySystems Co., (NESCO) of Kirkland Washington, proposed to build a 660 megawattnatural gas fired electric generator facility in Sumas, Washington Sumas is a small(population: 960) economically depressed town on the Canadian border located inWhatcom County SE1, as described later is a much smaller co-generation plant that wascompleted in 1990 SE2 was sited in an open area a few hundred yards west of city hallwhich itself was located on the city’s declining retail thoroughfare The plant's site wasalso nearly an equal distance south of the Canadian border, about a half mile Hardpressed for employment and income, largely due to the collapse of cross-border shopping

in the early 90s, for years Sumas had been searching for a niche in the emergingcontinental NAFTA economy to rescue it from its boom-bust cycles and peripheral USlocation The proposal by an American power giant to use Albertan natural gas, thatflowed just across the border from Sumas, to produce relatively clean electricity forshipment to growing southern markets (perhaps even as far south as Mexico) seemed like

a poster child for how the new continental economy should work The project would rely

on linking to the Canadian grid, whose cables were a convenient six miles north, andinitially had a tentative agreement to buy water for the plant from nitrogen contaminatedwells in Abbotsford and to recycle the effluent through the Sumas sewer system thattravels back across the border into Abbotsford's treatment plant Economic benefitslooked promising on all sides, despite the plants projection of a rather modest workforce

(under 30 jobs), its tax base could go a long way to compensating for the decline in border shopping.

cross-Today, five years after it was first proposed, after a cross-border grassroots environmentalorganization lead the opposition, and the mayor of Abbotsford was turned out of office asthe political structure turned from initial support to current opposition, after numeroushearings and public debate, the project is stalled at best and dead at worst What went

wrong? Or depending on your perspective, what went right! Was this another example

of the American establishment treating Canada's front door like their back door? That isdepositing its least desirable activities on this peripheral border, much like McGreevy(1988) suggests for the American chemical industry along the Niagara Frontier or a morerecent attempt to establish a nuclear waste depository on the west Texas-Mexican border(Rodriguez and Hagan, 2001) Or is this merely a trans-border example of NIMBYism?Let California build their own power plants Or is this a signal of the stalling ofeconomic integration between the small Washington border communities in WhatcomCounty and their much larger BC counterparts? Or is this the start of a true local, perhapseven grassroots, input into cross border regional affairs? The beginning of a true micro-scale Cross Border Region (CBR)? In sum, is this local border operating more as abarrier focused on national themes and control or as a contact point where the localchoice will inform and influence the national? The public events of this situation arefairly clear to date; it is the private motivations and their long term impacts that have yet

to be discovered This paper seeks to layout a framework for investigating these themes

by drawing on the new interdisciplinary work into the study of CBRs as they areemerging around the world Thus, it will do this by by engaging the hypothesesunderlying our growing understanding of CBRs, how they emerged, what they are, andhow they operate while relying on the public record of events surrounding SE2.Basically, we wish to ask: (1) how does the Abbotsford-Sumas [A-S] relationship fit intothe emerging discussion on CBRs and (2) what questions should be asked or areasstudied in order to understand the trajectory of this possible CBR

This paper is organized into four parts The context of this study is presented in the firstsection, with an overview and timeline of the SE2 “saga” We provide a geographic andhistoric background to the region and then an outline of events that have unfoldedconcerning SE2 This is followed with a review of the discussion of CBRs in the postcold war era with a specific focus on how this illuminates the events unfolding in the A-Sregion Third, we explore the discourse that has developed around the concept ofCascadia at a meso scale and then relate A-S to this process at a micro scale One keyfactor in this discussion concerning an emerging Cascadia is the role of the economy andthe environment in defining the governance of this region What it is, what it could orshould be In our concluding section we evaluate the usefulness of using the lens of aCBR to understand and investigate the A-S relationship and the controversy over SE2 andset the stage to move from merely a reporting of the public record to a more in-depthstudy of the micro-level networks that will affect the future of this area, as a potentiallyemerging CBR

1.0 - SE2 and Abbotsford-Sumas CBR?

This analysis is set in the Fraser Lowland borderland region and focuses on events thatoccurred in the border communities of Abbotsford and Sumas The Fraser Lowland, aroughly triangular shaped wedge of land bordered on the North by the Coast Mountains,

on the East and South by the Cascade mountains inland and the Chuckanut Plataeu, andfinally on the West by the Strait of Georgia The Fraser River and to a lesser degree theNooksack River have been instrumental in filling the geologic trough underlying thislowland, leaving an area of moderate elevation walled in by mountains, plateau, andocean

The Lowland forms nearly an equilateral triangle with one side paralleling the coast withVancouver, BC at the upper northern corner and Bellingham, WA at the lower southerncorner As the triangle tapers inland, Abbotsford—Sumas is near but not quite at thethird corner of the triangle The international border runs from the coast inland past theAbbotsford—Sumas divide and further up the Fraser Valley, splitting the Lowland intonearly equal American (western Whatcom County) and Canadian (lower BC mainland)parts As an ecological region, the Lowland is unified and has been under separatepolitical management only for the past century and a half Travel across this border hasvaried from a frontier heritage, which lasted well into the twentieth century with inland

Canadian students traveling daily across adjacent farm fields to nearby American schools;however, over time crossing has become ever more controlled in recent years first in thename of stemming drugs and illegal aliens, and now in the words of one border guard toprevent terrorists from, “taking out Cincinnati.”

Historically, Sumas grew as a border settlement with an equally small Canadian twin,Huntingdon, BC In fact, despite the slow but steady annexation of surrounding places tofinally create the City of Abbotsford, the border crossing is still identified as Huntingdon

As the twin towns initially were platted out, each blended into the other and helped createthe economies of scale to help supply one another's needs However, the gradualtightening of the border, but even more so the coming of the Canadian transcontinentalrailroad several miles north of the border, established the town of Abbotsford as the localhub to Canadian activity, leading to the decline of Huntingdon and anemic growth ofSumas

The post-war boom of the lower mainland of BC (as the Canadian portion of the FraserLowland is commonly known), brought thousands of new inhabitants into the area thatbecame the modern city of Abbotsford and swelled the population from approximately40,000 in 1950 to 110,000 in 2000, with a wider metropolitan population of 150,000Clearly, much more than a satellite to the much bigger Vancouver, 30 miles to the west,Abbotsford became a force to be reckoned with in its own right

Sumas, however served as little more than a combination isolated small town at thefarthest reaches of the American economy, and depending on the exchange rate, a crossborder retail center for gasoline, cheese, butter, and milk to the Canadians When timeswere good, like the early 1990s, residents complained about the ability to even cross theirmain street due to traffic backups of Canadians trying to get their American bought goodsback across the border But, the decline of the Canadian dollar in the late 1990s has leftSumas with empty storefronts and closed gas stations

In an attempt to overcome this boom-bust cycle, Sumas tried turning to industry andelectrical energy production However, given its location on the American periphery, 12miles from the nearest major state highway (the Guide Meridian) and even further toInterstate 95, its most likely scenario for success in this location would be through sometype of link with Canada, whose rail yards back-up practically into Sumas and whoseTrans Canadian highway was only a short two miles north Inventorying its advantages,Sumas noted that Canadian natural gas from Alberta passed as near to town as thehighway Second, a shared cross border aquifer (Sumas-Abbotsford Aquifer) providedample water for industrial use, even if some of it suffered from nitrogen contamination,most likely a result of poor agricultural practices both north and south of the border.Third, the Canadian power grid, which thanks to NAFTA now serves as conduit not onlyfor the US and Canadian markets but also Mexico, was just north of the border Finally,ever rising demand for power in the US, especially in California, seemed to assure amarket for whatever could be produced After the successful implementation of a 120megawatt co-generation plant that provided not only power for the American market but

also a kiln operation to cure Canadian wood, a second much larger plant was proposed in1999.

As Sumas searched desperately to find some long-term economic traction, Abbotsfordbegan to feel the fallout of its own success Located on the inland reaches of the FraserValley, the air shed around Abbotsford began to feel the stress of ever growing numbers,especially in a region known for heavy automobile use, at least by Canadian standards.This is exacerbated by intensive agriculture which generates high amounts of ammonia.Asthma rates for children in the Upper Fraser Valley are among the highest in Canada.However, given Abbotsford's appetite for continued explosive growth into the future, itneeds to defend its right to exploit whatever part of the air shed can be further used.This resulted in the situation at it now stands, an elephant and a mouse fighting over avery fragile and stressed air shed, where each feels the need and the right to addconsiderably more pollution in the name of progress

Table 1 (below) provides a timeline of events involving SE2 and also indicates the scale

at which the action occurred Prior to the current SE2 controversy NESCO hadsuccessfully built SE1, a small 120mw co-generation natural gas fired power plant.Permitting for this plant due to its small size occurred at the local city level, , and hasproven to be highly successful and profitable to NESCO, Sumas, and the Canadian firmusing the surplus heat to kiln dry wood However, it too faced some local opposition, butnot enough to prevent its completion

In 1999 initial local government reaction to NESCO's plan for the much larger SE2660mw dual fired natural gas and diesel plant was highly favorable in both Sumas andAbbotsford Both cities expected to reap financial rewards from the project, however themajority of the benefits would go to Sumas Thus, they were caught a bit off-guard bythe size and sudden strength of grassroots opposition Opposition was based on theimpact that emissions would have on the already stressed air-shed Several of the mostvisible opponents were GASP [Generations Affected by Senseless Power], and the SE2Action Group allied with ADBA [Abbotsford Downtown Business Association] Twomeasures are available to judge the level of this local opposition, the first is a newspaperarticle and letters to the editor study by a research team of Canadian and Americanstudents [Forward, Johnson, Hendy and Chervenock, 2004]1 They demonstrated thatmost interest and concern about the plant was highly local Even the nearby cities ofBellingham and Vancouver showed considerably less coverage of and concern about thecontroversy then the Abbotsford Times and Lynden Tribune2 Second, opposition wasproportionately and numerically much greater on the Canadian side then the Americanside of the border However, opponents outnumbered proponents on both sides of theborder Greater Canadian concern and opposition might well be expected given the factthey shared the environmental impacts but received very limited economic benefits A

1 This team of undergraduate students was part of a unique Borderlands course that concentrates on the Fraser Lowland including both American and Canadian students that the authors have been involved with through their institutions over the last 5 years See Nichol, Belec, and Buckley [2003] for details.

2 Since Sumas has no newspaper of its own, the closest is the Lynden Tribune a weekly paper published a dozen miles away in the town of Lynden.

second measure of support/opposition is recorded in local city elections which served asplebiscites on local political leadership In the case of Sumas the local administration had

no trouble winning re-election However, in Abbotsford, not only did the mayor fail toremain in office, but his replacement, Mary Reeves, was a vocal opponent of SE2 and amember of ADBA These results taken together show wide and deep opposition to SE2

in Abbotsford, but perhaps support inside the city limits of Sumas with opposition in thesurrounding American region covered by the Lynden Tribune One last point to stresshere is that more than one opposition organization existed, GASP which appears to bemore American and SE2 Action Group/ADBA which is clearly Canadian

Table 1 – SE2 Timeline

Scale Year Month Event

a 120mw co-generation power plant

Meso 1999 January NESCO files initial SE2 plans to EFSEC requesting permits for a

dual natural gas and diesel fueled 660mw power plant.

grassroots campaign in opposition to SE2 in US

Association] also begins grassroots effort opposing SE2 in Canada

Meso 2001 February EFSEC unanimously rejects initial plan in 11-0 vote

plant Meso August BC granted intervener status on SE2 hearings before EFSEC

Meso August Gov Locke after hearings and phone discussions with BC gives

final approval to SE2 permits

consider environmental effects when reviewing the SE2 application."

grid can also include the environmental effects of the plant itself

December NEB rules that connection for SE2 to the power grid is not

environmentally damaging

grid citing local environmental impacts of plant itself

NEB agrees to hear the appeal

prevent SE2 from using existing power line right-of-ways to connect to the grid via Whatcom County

A brief summary of the primary events concerning SE2 as outlined in Table 1 areprovided here Given the size of the new power plant, Washington State level approvalwas required, unlike SE1 In fact this is a two step procedure First Washington State's

EFSEC [Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council] holds hearings and then recommends tothe governor to either approve or not approve all State level permits, then the governormakes the final decision Thus, NESCO applied to EFSEC for such permits in 1999.Part of this process also required the filing of an environmental impact statement[EIS]with region 10 of the federal Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] The initialSE2 proposal included a back-up diesel generator for times when natural gas might be inshort supply (for example cold snaps in winter) This proposal was soundly rejected (11-0) in February of 2001 and withdrawn shortly after by NESCO A revised design wasthen submitted with only natural gas as the fuel, this plan was eventually approved byEFSEC and subsequently by Governor Gary Locke in August of 2002 A key eventduring hearings on this second submittal was the granting of intervener status to the BCProvincial government This was an admission by Washington State that an internationalplayer from across the border should have a seat at the table along with State basedentities, an important first However, despite the fact that Gov Locke telephoned BCpolitical leaders for their views after EFSEC approved SE2, it appears that projectapproval was based primarily on internal Sumas and Washington State issues.

After Gov Locke's approval of the project, Canadians started casting about for any higherlevel federal body to stop SE2 First was an appeal made by BC along with EnvironmentCanada to the US EPA appeals board, primarily on somewhat obscure technical grounds

to deny the EIS This was rather quickly and soundly rejected Second, BC in a lastditch effort turned to the National Energy Board of Canada [NEB] The role of NEB was

to issue the permit for connection of SE2 onto the grid in Abbotsford Without such aconnection it is questionable if the plant would ever be viable Traditionally NEB limitsits review to the direct impacts of power lines themselves However, in the case of SE2

at the urging of BC, NEB agreed in late 2002 to look at both the impact of the power lineand the power plant to supply it, even though the power plant was in the US To date thishas proven to be critical Suddenly the Canadians put themselves in the position todictate environmental if not economic policy to their neighbor After announcing inDecember of 2003 that the power line itself had an acceptable impact, in March 2004NEB rejected NESCO's application on the grounds that the power plant itself would haveadverse impacts on the local region in Canada

Parallel to this move in Canada, legislation was moving through the Whatcom CountyCouncil to control the size and location of high voltage power lines These regulations,approved in late July 2004, are seen as crucial to preventing a supplier from manipulatingexisting permits to ship large quantities of power in multiple, parallel lower voltage lines.Although these regulations were a result of long standing opposition to new high voltagelines in Whatcom County including a successful 1990 referendum issue, for the momentthey essentially force SE2 to link to the Canadian grid in Abbotsford, where similarrestrictions are absent

At the time of writing, the final outcome of the SE2 application has yet to be determined.The complex and lengthy time line, combined with a number of competing interests(national/economic security and national/local identity, to name only the moreprominent), has made this an increasingly difficult story for residents to follow In the

crisis of governance that has ensued, many have been forced to consider their “region”anew To what extent is a cross border region emerging in the Fraser Lowland? Weapproach this issue by first reviewing aspects of the CBR literature in the next section

2.0 The Cross Border Region

According to Perkmann and Sum the era of the Cross Border Region [CBR] has arrived,where the CBR is defined to be …" a territorial unit that comprises contiguous sub-national units…" [2002,3] With the end of the Cold War and the rise of Globalizedcapitalism, the national scale as the "natural" unit for planning, policy and decisionmaking has changed as the supra national organization and the CBR at opposite ends ofthe spectrum have begun to supplement and also compliment it [Leresche and Saez,2002] As a result, there has been a …"relativization of scale" [Jessop, 2002, 25].Economic, political, social, and even environmental relations are no longer controlledsolely at the national scale; instead a proliferation of scales has emerged ranging from theglobal to the local Especially in the economic realm, the post-WWII era factors that lead

to the primacy of the national scale for economic governance have been replaced withwhat Jessop identifies as "the knowledge based economy", which is causing governance

to migrate to the scale most appropriate to the issues Leresche and Saez [2002] describe

a multiplicity of overlapping scales with variable geometry Rather than decisions beingmade based on a "topocratic" logic [a logic based on an authority in a single definedstable territory, i.e nation-state] a multiterritorial "adhocratic" logic has emerged, where

…"adhocratic logics are based on reference territories of variable geometry, with vagueand multiple boundaries that change according to scale on which problems are treated"[2002, 95]

Operating in parallel with these geographic logics are institutional logics On the onehand is the affiliation logic related to identity with the traditional political territory and inthe case of Western nations based on a democratic logic On the other hand, there is themore efficiency based network or functional logic which can emerge from and/or helpscreate the CBR What then results is "multilevel governance and problem solving".Under this new rubric the old national scale is not simply replaced or usurped by a newscale but instead coexists with a variety of new scales that engulf, overlap, or arecontained in all or part by the old In a similar fashion, the new functional logicaugments the affiliation logic in issues that can be "multiterritorial, multisectoral, andmulti-institutional" Also, under this new cognitive regime, it is the problem that helpsdefine the scale(s) at which it will be dealt, not simply the scale that defines and dictatesthe solution to the problem as the old national topocratic method had done However, asLeresche and Saez emphasize due to the relative regulatory weakness of decisionsapplied to CBRs, it is their "complexity and opacity" which stands-out Thus, successfulgovernance in these regions relies on recognition of interdependencies and cooperationbetween all parties The emergence of "Greater China" [Sum, 2002b] based on erstwhilerivals China and Taiwan along with Hong Kong is a good example of how this verycomplex issue of carving-out a thriving CBR while maintaining strong yet somewhatrival national territorial identities can be navigated

In the post-war era, Leresche and Saez find that there appears to be three successive eras

of ascendancy in what they typify as political frontier or governmentality regimes whichrelate to the type and locus of control exerted by the overlapping scales affecting CBRs

Although Leresche and Saez suggest that these three regimes, government, governability, and governance, have appeared chronologically over the last several decades, they may

actually reflect a multi-scalar continuum which has coexisted with the emergence ofnation-states, where scalar ascendancy is more a result of a sense of national security assuggested by House [as cited in Minghi, 1991] than temporal evolution

The government regime reflects the top down, centralized national scale which typified

control over CBR public activities until the waning of the cold war Cross border issuesare treated as international affairs, and the boundary is both a defense against outsideintrusion and a definer of national identity In such a core-periphery structure, the localborder regions have little room for autonomous independent movement or even influence

on national decisions Examples of impacts on CBRs which occurred during this regimethat recognized specialized local needs and opportunities were the North American AutoPact, maquiladoras along the US-Mexican border, and a variety of sponsored borderactivities between the then European Common Market countries All of these requirednational scale approval, guidance and control, regardless of how localized they were

The governability regime, is defined more as an interlude than stable end point, a period

of crisis, conflict, and change where the national scale attempts to continue to control anddam-up the ever-growing demands of the CBR which are beginning the process of

overflow across the border Here, if we think of the three political boundary regimes as

part of a continuum or balance beam with more stability when the ends dominate (border

as primarily barrier or primarily contact point), this represents a period of transition(overflow) where the national scale still attempts to exert absolute control, but is notequipped to address the burgeoning local needs Meanwhile the local region has onlybegun to exert itself, and is neither independent enough nor focused enough to exertmuch control over its local destiny The local scale has begun to discover that to plan forits future in a CBR it must be more independent of the national scale than the center iswilling to permit and also more open to building long term trans-national ties withneighboring regions than it is often prepared to do, especially if cultural and economicdifferences are substantial Current events along the Arizona-Mexican and California-Mexican border seem to mimic this regime Although these areas have a growing need tocreate and manage CBRs with a strong local commitment and common vision it ishampered first by the fact that most real control is still at national and state/provincialscales and second that local scale actors still seem to be addressing only one problem at atime and have yet to articulate a common sense of purpose, vision, or identity Castillo[2001] finds that the result in places like the two Nogales (Arizona and Sonara) is that thefederal government has made a once fairly open "white border" into a black forbiddingone cutting social ties that extend back generations; the state to state level organizationalso is seen as being unresponsive to truly local needs, and the local public officials onlyseem able to react after a crisis has appeared, not pro-act Scott in viewing the sameregion, although a bit more hopeful about the success of very small scale projects, notes