Renewable energy, improved transmission discussed at meeting

The state's military base planning committee descended upon Clovis Wednesday afternoon, where members received an update on Cannon Air Force Base and heard about a push for renewable energy and better transmission lines.

The committee's quarterly meeting, held at Clovis Community College, took about two hours — including a 20-minute closed session to discuss propriety information, with no action taken afterward.

During the meeting, the committee heard updates from Col. Craig Walker, vice commander of the 27th Special Operations Wing at Cannon, New Mexico Renewable Energy Transmission Authority Executive Director Jeremy Turner and Office of Military Base Planning and Support Director Hanson Scott.

Walker's update included a basic overview of the Air Force Special Operation Command base and its role across the world. At any point, Walker said, Cannon has 700 of its personnel across the world. Most of those missions handle small combat operations and prevent their escalations.

Walker said that as a fighter wing, Cannon peaked at 3,500 personnel; it's now at 5,400 and on the way to 6,300. Add in dependents and Cannon accounts for around 11,000 people in Curry and Roosevelt counties.

"Now that we are growing, we are stressing the infrastructure," Walker said, noting that his most oft-used example is the base sewer system. Ongoing renovations will increase capacity from 250,000 gallons to 1.25 million gallons, and that's a small part of ongoing construction.

"If you took the entire budget that is given to the United States Air Force to build facilities, Cannon Air Force Base has 20 percent of the budget," Walker said. "That is a significant commitment to keeping this base open for the future."

Walker also spoke on the recent closure of Curry Road R, and showed a photo of the road along the base's western border with a semi truck driving by and only a wire fence protecting the base. Walker noted that a person driving a truck bomb could "dramatically impact" the missions of the base.

Turner discussed numerous projects across the southwest, including the SunZia Project that would transport energy from Arizona and New Mexico across the region and the Tres Amigas power superstation in Curry County.

Turner said Tres Amigas, a project to join the nation's three largest power grids and allow for the transmission of power between the grids, could have been a benefit in an instance similar to Hurricane Sandy where local power plants are knocked out. With a transmission infrastructure in place, Turner said, power from unaffected areas could be moved to affected ones.

The projects, Turner said, would require upgrades to transmission lines — a move Turner felt should be handled with immediacy and with a 20-year plan in mind.

"I've been in New Mexico long enough," Turner said. "We have a tendency to Band-Aid our issues sometimes. We go in and do something and then five years later we go in and take a look and realize it wasn't built correctly or it wasn't sized right. Then we get to do it again, and it costs taxpayers those additional dollars."

Scott spoke about his office's efforts to help the Department of Defense with defining an installation's "military value" — with consideration given to mission capability, available land and airspace, cost of operation and manpower implications. Scott said he wanted to suggest a definition of "net cost," because a cost transferred to another agency is still a cost.

The committee planned its next meeting for February in Santa Fe, but did not finalize a day or location.