Public Opposition Spurs County to Delay New Biomass Facility

[Inter­est­ing piece by indus­try PR per­son in regards to deal­ing with pub­lic oppo­si­tion to dirty ener­gy projects. ‑Ed.]

- by Al Maior­i­no, Sep­tem­ber 2, 2014, Renew­able Ener­gy Magazine

Tran­syl­va­nia Coun­ty in North Car­oli­na is cur­rent­ly engaged in inten­sive inter­nal debate about the role of bio­mass in their future. The cur­rent state of affairs began last year when Renew­able Devel­op­ers, a New York based LLC, pro­posed the con­struc­tion of a bio­mass waste to ener­gy con­ver­sion plant in the town of Penrose.

The new facil­i­ty would uti­lize the pyrol­y­sis method of con­ver­sion to turn wood chips and munic­i­pal sol­id waste into approx­i­mate­ly four megawatts of renew­ably sourced elec­tric­i­ty. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, staunch pub­lic oppo­si­tion lead by the NIMBY group Peo­ple for Clean Moun­tains (PCM) imme­di­ate­ly began to oppose the facil­i­ty after it was announced.

This is despite the fact that the Pen­rose plant will be clean, noise­less and as odor­less as pos­si­ble while bring­ing up to 26 new jobs and 70 tem­po­rary jobs to the eco­nom­i­cal­ly dis­cour­aged com­mu­ni­ty. Addi­tion­al­ly, the new plant should have both fis­cal con­ser­v­a­tives and envi­ron­men­tal­ists on its side since the method uti­lized will allow the coun­ty to become waste inde­pen­dent while at the same time pre­vent­ing the annu­al release of approx­i­mate­ly 55,000 tons of the green­house gas car­bon diox­ide into the atmosphere.

Nev­er­the­less, it is the impact of the oppo­si­tion that has been felt in Tran­syl­va­nia Coun­ty. To date, due to the efforts of the over 400 online mem­bers of PCM, the con­struc­tion of the facil­i­ty has been stalled. PCM’s abil­i­ty to trans­late an online pres­ence into a real world pres­ence has been key to this vic­to­ry, and their mem­bers have been vocal­ly present at com­mis­sion­er meetings.

As of July 17^th all talk on the pro­pos­al has been tabled for anoth­er six months while the coun­ty com­mis­sion­ers try to come to a con­clu­sion. When talks are reopened, there are a few tac­tics below that the devel­op­er and any oth­er devel­op­er in a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion should consider:

Iden­ti­fy Contacts

The roll out of a pub­lic affairs cam­paign for any project is the one of the most cru­cial aspects of a suc­cess­ful out­reach cam­paign in terms of acquir­ing sup­port­er con­tacts. A cam­paign can be ini­ti­at­ed with a vari­ety of com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­niques. Reach out to all res­i­dents in a com­mu­ni­ty through a city-wide edu­ca­tion ini­tia­tive that includes direct mail, paid adver­tis­ing, and tele­phone iden­ti­fi­ca­tion calls.

Some res­i­dents may be swayed by the infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed in a mail­er alone. It is a great way to con­trast com­mu­ni­ty ben­e­fits with sec­tions on how to help per­son­al­ly. An effec­tive mail­er should include a tear-off mail in sec­tion with a space for sup­port­ers to pro­vide their con­tact infor­ma­tion for mobi­liza­tion. The inclu­sion of this fea­ture to the mail­er allows the read­er to act imme­di­ate­ly before they lose momentum. 

While the mail­er is a must use tool to edu­cate a com­mu­ni­ty on the pro­pos­al, a cer­tain seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion will always pre­fer the per­son­al touch of a phone call. There­fore, it is the duty of a com­pa­ny to iden­ti­fy sup­port­ers through a phone call cam­paign that uti­lizes a per­sua­sive script. Unlike mail, a phone call can­not be dealt with pas­sive­ly by sim­ply cast­ing it aside for lat­er action. It is impor­tant that res­i­dents receive phone calls explain­ing why they should sup­port a bio­mass facil­i­ty so that myths and half truths put out by the oppo­si­tion can be negated.

Intro­duce Yourself

When ener­gy providers secure the right to install on piece of land, their best move is to be up front and open with their new neigh­bors. With all due haste they should set up an open house style event with experts and com­pa­ny con­tact per­son­nel on site to engage with locals on rel­e­vant issues. Hav­ing sev­er­al out­reach spe­cial­ists avail­able in a casu­al set­ting like this allows a more per­son­al style of com­mu­ni­ca­tion between com­pa­ny rep­re­sen­ta­tives and con­cerned cit­i­zens. It allows the com­pa­ny to explain its posi­tion in a more approach­able for­mat so that cit­i­zen con­cerns are more eas­i­ly assuaged.

The casu­al, open approach to the event also takes away the opposition’s most pow­er­ful tool, their abil­i­ty to grand­stand and cause a scene. Pro­tes­tors know that noth­ing shuts down a press con­fer­ence faster than this type of behav­ior because either way they win by either stop­ping the com­pa­ny from explain­ing its posi­tion or by infil­trat­ing the minds of oth­er atten­dees, cast­ing a pall over the entire cam­paign and attain­ing an image victory.

Orga­nize and Man­age a Database

Hav­ing a large cache of advo­cates will­ing to sup­port you is always pos­i­tive, and com­pa­nies should strive to acquire as many as pos­si­ble through respons­es to mail­ers and calls. How­ev­er, if these on the-ground-pro­po­nents are not effec­tive­ly man­aged and mobi­lized, they will prove use­less in the long run. Com­pa­nies must from day one estab­lish a cen­tral data­base of their sup­port­ers. It should include at the very least names, phone num­bers, address­es, and notes. The data­base can also be expand­ed to include dis­trict, par­ty iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, and income to tar­get com­mu­ni­ca­tion in a par­tic­u­lar way if need be. With this crit­i­cal tool, com­pa­nies can not only keep track of how many peo­ple are sup­port­ers and who they are, but they can also actu­al­ly approach these sup­port­ers and ask them, “Will you help?” Ask­ing this ques­tion can be the dif­fer­ence between a town coun­cil meet­ing devoid of sup­port­ers hold­ing signs and ral­ly­ing on behalf of the bio­mass indus­try and one packed with them. 

Embrace Tech­nol­o­gy

Sup­port­ers, and oppo­nents, might be most active where you can­not even see them. That is why it is no longer an option to not pur­sue a web pres­ence, espe­cial­ly on social media. On the inter­net, many users feel the appar­ent anonymi­ty allows them to express their thoughts in a less fil­tered man­ner. While this is great for pro­mot­ing open, hon­est dia­logue, it can also foment the for­ma­tion of dam­ag­ing rumors and mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions. That is why even in this dig­i­tal space a com­pa­ny and its sup­port­ers must be present. Wher­ev­er mis­in­for­ma­tion rears its head it must be con­front­ed with fac­tu­al­ly accu­rate data from the com­pa­ny or more impor­tant­ly a proposal’s sup­port­ers themselves.

The web is also a great place to real­ly con­nect and net­work with sup­port­ers. It is the eas­i­est way to keep them updat­ed and informed in regards to progress being made, and it serves as a use­ful bul­letin board that can enlight­en many sup­port­ers with min­i­mal effort and cost.

Main­tain the Momentum

Some offi­cials can be very ardent sup­port­ers of a cer­tain pol­i­cy even if their con­stituents might dis­agree. That is why every com­pa­ny must make a final push in their cam­paign to edu­cate and inform its sup­port­ers about their gov­ern­ment. Hold reg­u­lar sup­port­er meet­ings as a way to inte­grate let­ter writ­ing dri­ves and hear­ing prepa­ra­tion for speak­ers. Every town meet­ing and every cam­paign event should be filled with bio­mass indus­try sup­port­ers, to remind pub­lic offi­cials that it is the pub­lic to which they are beholden.

Al Maior­i­no start­ed Pub­lic Strat­e­gy Group, Inc. in 1995. His firm has devel­oped and man­aged mul­ti­ple cor­po­rate pub­lic affairs cam­paigns in a vari­ety of indus­tries such as gam­ing, cable tele­vi­sion, retail devel­op­ment, auto rac­ing, ener­gy and res­i­den­tial projects. Addi­tion­al­ly, his firm has worked on projects in twen­ty states and three countries.