Letter: Xcel should pay for every cask

To the Editor:

Many years ago Xcel Energy nuclear power facility was welcomed to Red Wing. Since their arrival, Xcel Energy has enjoyed the unequivocal support of its citizens bound by a long-term agreement that financially compensated our community while providing Xcel Energy with much needed community support.

Yet in recent years, Xcel Energy has decided that they will unilaterally change the terms of their arrangement with their good friends, the citizens of Red Wing. Now, they don’t want to pay what they promised when they needed a welcoming community for their nuclear power facility.

Xcel Energy has decided that Red Wing will have to make do with less, notwithstanding the overwhelming support that all Red Wing provided when Xcel Energy desperately needed their license renewed and PUC permission to keep additional spent nuclear waste fuel casks on their Prairie Island site.

Where does that leave us? Red Wing and the Prairie Island Indian Community can’t tell Xcel Energy to remove their facility. Let them pay a cask fee for our permission to keep spent nuclear waste within city limits.

Red Wing and the Prairie Island Indian Community should treat Xcel’s waste like any other business. All new casks will be assessed a cask fee until Xcel Energy has removed from them from their site. The cask fee, which could be shared by Red Wing and the Prairie Island Indian Community, would equal the difference between what Xcel promised to pay in the past and what they are now intend to pay.

There is no need to pass the cask fee onto Minnesota ratepayers because Xcel Energy already factored in the long-term financial commitment to our community when they were invited to build the nuclear power facility in the first place.

Sorry, Xcel Energy. It’s just business between friends. After all, we are partners, right?

Craig Livingstone

Red Wing

Tags: opinion, letters, xcel