By Stephen Smoot
Once upon a time, 13 passengers took a transoceanic voyage on a moderately sized boat. Each had their own cabin for their exclusive use during the voyage.
About halfway across the ocean, the captain, P. J. Miller, or PJM for short, was made aware of a leak that started to allow water into the room of a passenger named Virgil.
The Captain sent his engineer to check out the problem. Sure enough, a slow leak had opened in the hull of the boat. A recommendation soon came to conduct repairs to prevent the leak from causing problems for all 13 passengers.
One cabin, belonging to a passenger named Virgil, would need to be addressed first. That said, the engineer would have to go through the neighboring cabin belonging to Wes.
The engineer explained to Wes that he would need to temporarily remove a few square inches of the cabin’s floor to access the leak. While not dangerous now, the engineer warned, it would not take long for water to seep into every cabin, causing all inconvenience and frustration.
Wes asked, “the water is probably going into Virgil’s cabin first. How is that my business? Why should I incur inconvenience and the tearing up of part of my cabin floor to fix a leak that doesn’t affect me?”
Captain PJM stated that in time, the leak would affect every passenger and may even threaten the safety of the boat and all aboard if allowed to continue too long. He even offered Wes some compensation for the inconvenience of allowing a repair.
The Captain stated, “Yes, Wes, you have your own cabin but we all have to share this boat. Whatever happens on this boat affects every one of us. You may have your own cabin, but that will not help you if this leak keeps getting worse.”
Wes decided to take his chances and hope that the issue of the leak would resolve itself.
After all, Wes thought, why should he take on this burden to help Virgil? What benefit would he, Wes, get from fixing the leak if he was not seeing any problems.
Another few days passed. Now the leak welled up into Virgil’s cabin and spilled into the hallways. Water slowly rose higher and higher. Wes reasoned that maybe if he kept his door shut, it would keep the rising water from him.
Then the next morning, Wes woke up. He had two inches of water on the floor of his cabin. Water had seeped into his clean clothes and also ruined the electronics and books he brought on board. Wes called the Captain and he was furious.
“Captain!” Wes shouted. “I see that the boat leak has gotten worse. Now it has ruined my expensive electronics, destroyed my books, and gotten my clean clothes all wet. I demand that you fix the problem and compensate me for my trouble.”
Indeed now every cabin had standing water. All passengers had to incur more and more trouble because the Captain could not repair the leak.
The Captain responded, “We had a chance to address the issue before it became a problem. You refused to cooperate. Now we all suffer and each of us will have to sacrifice a lot to set the issue right again.”
Some in West Virginia have opposed a variety of projects to expand the capacity of power production and the ability of the grid to distribute that power within the PJM system to where it needs to go to prevent shortages.
When people say “no” they need to know what they are saying no to.
West Virginia is not an island in the power producing world. The Mountain State is, if you will, part of a unified grid system with 12 other states. It truly does not matter why the rest of the grid needs the power, whether for data centers or Tiddly Winks. A need exists and if it is not met, all will face mountain problems with electric power.
Without upgrades and improvements in both production and transmission, the grid will experience periods of failure. People with the most vulnerabilities, such as the elderly, will suffer the most in such situations.
And West Virginia is in a position to both “do our part” while also reaping benefits of added tax revenues for schools, fire, EMS, water, sewer, and other basic needs.
This multi-state grid rises and falls together the same as passengers on a single boat in the middle of the ocean. There is no such thing as West Virginia having an ability to hoard its own power production for its own use.
West Virginia does not need to just say “yes “ to anyone’s first offer and “no” is just not sustainable.
The proper answer is “yes,but.” Negotiate with these companies to get the most benefit for the projects that need to happen. Make the most of the opportunity to work with these outfits to get reasonable amounts of help for community needs.
