Local man lobbies in D.C. for energy bill

A Mitchell businessman was part of a contingent of South Dakotans that visited congressional offices Tuesday in Washington, D.C., to show support for Senate clean-energy legislation.

Mark Puetz, of Puetz Corporation, said he headed East to offer his support “and to talk about different aspects of the American Power Act and the importance of efficiencies within the bill for the building-trade industry, and especially for Puetz Corporation.” He said the bill supports a range of cleanenergy sources, from clean coal and nuclear energy to wind and solar power.

Matt McGovern, South Dakota state director of Repower America and grandson of Mitchell native and former presidential nominee George McGovern, said he assembled the group to demonstrate the importance of the American Power Act for South Dakota.

The bill, sponsored by U.S. Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., has the potential, McGovern said, to “bring 5,000 cleanenergy jobs to South Dakota, cut our dependence on foreign oil and help solve the climate crisis.”

With the current oil-spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, McGovern said, “the need for action has never been more urgent.”

While Puetz was selected to be a representative of the state’s architectural and building interests, the group also included Wessington Springs mayor and former public utilities commissioner Jim Burg; Lisa Hicks, executive vice president for District 7 of the Communication Workers of America in Sioux Falls; Mike Risen, representing building tradesmen in eastern South Dakota; state Rep. Mitch Fargen, DFlandreau, who is also membership director for the South Dakota Farmers Union; and Matt McClarty, from the Environmental Law and Policy Center in Sioux Falls.

Repower South Dakota is associated with Repower America, a nonprofit organization founded in 2008 as a project of the Alliance for Climate Protection, which is headed by former vice president Al Gore. It is dedicated to the passage of clean-energy legislation.

The South Dakota group met with U.S. Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, D-S.D., and U.S. Sen. Tim Johnson, DS.D., and urged support for the American Power Act, the Senate version of the American Clean Energy and Security Act, which was passed by the U. S. House of Representatives last summer.

The new legislation will decrease America’s energy dependence by half and allow America to invest more in clean energy technologies, McGovern said.

“We spend $1 billion a day on foreign oil, and much of that goes to countries who are unstable or are hostile to us,” he said.

McGovern said the draft legislation will provide incentives for clean-energy sources, and especially wind energy. It would put people to work, he said, making homes and businesses more energy-efficient.

The legislation would also provide another income stream for farmers in the form of emission offset payments, McGovern said. Farmers using no-till farming methods would be able to store carbon and then cash in on those reduced carbon emissions via the legislation, which caps emissions but allows large industry to purchase tradable emission permits. The system is often referred to as “cap and trade.”

Herseth Sandlin opposed the 2009 House version of the bill because it did not fully address South Dakota’s needs, Puetz said. He is hopeful the congresswoman will back the more comprehensive Senate version of the bill.

“She said she would keep an open mind to the legislation in the Senate,” Puetz said.

Johnson has said he is optimistic about the economic potential of clean-energy legislation.

“I am optimistic we can turn energy potential into reality and help create new job opportunities at home by producing more clean energy in the United States,” Johnson wrote in an August op-ed piece.

The group did not stop by U.S. Sen. John Thune’s office.

“He’s on record as being strongly opposed to it,” McGovern said.

Thune, in July 2009, said he opposed the House version of the energy bill because he thinks the cap-and-trade system would drive up energy costs for agriculture. Energy producers, he said, would pass on the cost of emission controls to their consumers.

McGovern — who considered but ultimately opted against challenging Thune in this year’s Senate election — took the opposite view and said the American Coalition for an Energy Efficient Economy predicted that the House legislation would save the typical South Dakota home $226 a year in energy costs by 2020.

More to the point, McGovern said, “spending billions of dollars a day on foreign oil is something that’s not acceptable to our economy or our national security.”

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