One dozen islanders on Thursday converged on Puget Sound Energy’s Vashon Island customer service office to deliver a letter demanding the company do more to invest in renewable energy.
The small but vocal group, which consisted mostly of members of the Backbone Campaign and the Vashon Climate Action Group, planned to deliver a letter to the office on Vashon Highway signed by more than 1,300 islanders and addressed to PSE CEO Kimberly Harris. The signed petition opposes the utility’s plan to expand natural gas infrastructure by opening a liquid natural gas facility in Tacoma. But the demonstrators were met with locked doors and a “Closed” sign in the office window at 3:30 p.m., even though the office wasn’t scheduled to close until 5 p.m. — an hour and a half later. Both on-duty island deputies also arrived at the office just before 4 p.m. in response to a trespassing report regarding the demonstrators.
“If this office were open today, they would deliver them (the letter and pages of signatures) to Kimberly Harris,” islander Kevin Jones said at the Thursday demonstration. “But we’ll follow through and make sure they hear from you, Vashon.”
Reached Friday, PSE spokeswoman Janet Kim said that the company’s customer-facing offices open to the public, including ones in Vashon and Centralia, were closed early Thursday as a safety precaution.
“We did close some of our offices early to ensure the safety of our customers and employees,” she said. “We were being extra cautious and extra careful. We heard there would be protests and didn’t know what the turnout would be and wanted to be safe.”
There were similar protests at 12 other PSE offices, including at PSE headquarters in Bellevue, aimed at stopping the company’s investment in liquid natural gas (LNG), stopping its building of a LNG pipeline and facility on traditional Puyallup Land in Tacoma — the Puyallup tribe has filed a formal “stop work” order and sued over the plant set to open in 2019 — and calling for its investment in clean renewables. Environmentalists have also spoken out recently against PSE’s ownership of a coal-fired plant in Colstrip, Montana. Two of the plant’s four units are scheduled to be closed by 2022. There is no date for the closure of the other two units, but PSE says it has recently accelerated the process of “depreciating those investments” from ending in 2045 to ending in 2027.
PSE addressed the concerns in a statement released Thursday evening.
“PSE started a journey more than 10 years ago to reduce our carbon footprint … (and) is actively developing additional renewable resources that protect our customers’ pocketbook and the environment,” the statement indicated.
