March 3, 2010
J. LaMont Keen, President/CEO
c/o Piper Hyman, Communication Specialist
Idaho Power/IDACORP, Inc.
C. Stephen Allred, Managing Member
c/o Echo Chadwick, Director of Corporate Communication
IDACORP Inc.
RE: ACTIONS OF IDAHO POWER COMPANY EMPLOYEES 03/02/10
VIA ELECTRONIC MAIL ONLY TO phyman@idahopower.com and echadwick@idahopower.com
Dear Mssrs. Keen and Allred:
The purpose of this correspondence is to express my extreme displeasure with the actions of your employees following Idaho Power Company’s (IPC) Community Advisory Process meeting held in Grant County, Oregon on March 2, 2010. I understand that some or all of your employees, who represented IPC at the meeting, adjourned to a local restaurant where they proceeded to make disparaging, slanderous, and threatening remarks regarding local residents in an openly hostile manner in front of employees and patrons. Among other demeaning and bigoted statements, your employees’ remarks included such comments as:
“I could care less what these people say; we have the power to just take away their property and not even deal with them”
“The moderator of the meeting should have just told [one of the participants] to shut the f*** up”
Furthermore, I understand that your representatives also made numerous negative characterizations of the way local residents speak, denigrated Grant County and its citizens generally, and called into question the education and intelligence of meeting attendees and others from the community.
The employees of the establishment where this embarrassing display occurred are reluctant to come forward publically out of fear of reprisal from your employees. As far as I am concerned, restaurants are public places and the statements made by your representatives in that setting were public comments directly reflective upon IPC and IDACORP, Inc. Since this is clearly a matter of public concern, I am distributing this correspondence widely to ensure that each member of our community and our elected representatives understand what transpired, the attitude of the Company towards our community, and the strategy of imminent domain that IPC apparently is pursuing. I also intend to raise this matter with the State and Federal agencies overseeing the permitting and approval of your project as an example of the social injustice and potential civil rights issues that your Company’s public expressions signify.
What remains to be seen is only whether responsible officials from your Company will take immediate action to investigate this inexcusable and reprehensible behavior and the level of punitive actions that will be levied against the culpable employees. Lacking an appropriate, responsible, and commensurate reaction from your Company, I hope and beg that our elected officials explore possible sanctions against your Company and take immediate action to directly prohibit IPC from pursuing the measures suggested by your representatives, including an immediate moratorium on the use of imminent domain for the purpose of locating transmissions lines.
I own property in the path of one of your proposed routes. I notified your Company on December 2, 2009, of how disappointed I was with the attitude of some of your employees and how their behavior was not consistent with my prior experiences with IPC. Now, regarding the latter, it appears that I was mistaken and the prejudice of your Company against our community is much more widespread than I initially believed. Now, based on the continuing actions of your Company and its representatives, I am stating to you emphatically that I refuse to cooperate with your Company in the siting of any line through Grant County. Furthermore, I pledge to you that if your Company attempts to take any of my property through adverse condemnation I personally will use every means available to me, legal or otherwise, to keep you from stealing what my family and I have worked our entire lives to put together and what we hold so dear.
Regretfully yours,
Shaun W. Robertson
cc: list
