Part 2, FPL: coming to a neighborhood near you. By Youbetcha'

News Flash! FPL doesn’t care what you, your city council or your commissioner think about their ambitious plans to destroy any headway our communities have achieved towards making the landscape more attractive. It would be a good thing if the County Office of Sustainability and the Consumer Protection Advocate could intervene with the state on our behalf. However, most likely those important county departments will be axed by budget cuts.

The maps FPL has designed do not even begin to explain the scale of the pole issue. Without some terrific sense of visual perspective the average person cannot conceive of the visual impact of the thousands of poles they are slamming down in neighborhoods’ everywhere.

There are multiple issues with FPL’s latest plan:


• They are going after approval in spite of having no need as yet. They don’t need the poles if the nukes don’t get approved. The cart is going before the horse. They will use that approval one way or another, with or without the nuke approval.

• It sets the precept for other utilities to put plain old ugly and dangerous poles wherever they want. Think cell and television towers and the struggle the communities already have had with their placement.

• The poles can come down in a hurricane or a tornado spun off of a hurricane. The emergency recovery (and power restoration) would have been delayed for days if they had to clear poles of the proposed size off US 1 following Hurricane Andrew. As it was, the concrete poles lying on Old Cutler cut the response time down while workers had to clear both lanes blocked by poles. There was no driving around them and this was one of the county’s few north south-corridors. Do we want this happening on US 1?

• They are Political Intimidators. They use their (our?) money to intimidate our elected officials to “back off” public concerns whenever possible. As a monopoly they should NOT be allowed to support any event or charitable cause that has ties to an elected official. This includes Dade Days in Tallahassee, political campaigns, and your favorite cousins non-profit. They should not be allowed to lobby.

• FPL will use the pole placement to distract from the nuke issue. The more the public’s attention is scattered by multiple community crises, the better their nuke campaign will be going. It is a variation of the divide and conquer routine the developers use with communities before zoning hearings.

The communities impacted by the poles need to address this plan. The plan is well on its way to approval and there needs to be some strong intervention. FPL has sent letters to the residents impacted. Did you get one? Did you do anything about it? This plan is just the start of the trashing of our communities by a greedy corporate entity.

People outside of the proposed maps (north of Hialeah Gardens, City of Miami) should not rest. The massive power lines will not be “power lines to nowhere”. They are going to be heading northward, right up the spine of our great state. Right out of the state so the newly produced power from FPL’s newly built nukes can be sold. It comes right down to our quality of life verses FPL’s bottom line. I know who usually wins, don’t you? (see Part 1 yesterday)