I have a thing for bats.
Let’s call it a love-hate relationship.
First, the hate. Several years back, when I worked in the Post-Dispatch state capital bureau in Jefferson City, I was sitting alone in our office on High Street one summer day when a bat, out of nowhere, buzzed by my head. I ran out of the office like a scared child, screaming like one, too, only to realize I left my cellphone on my desk. I would have to return to do battle with the scary creature, or at least give him the idea I was there to do battle, while I retrieved my phone so I could call somebody to save me from my terror.
The good news about being in Jefferson City is there are a lot of wildlife experts there, working for the Department of Natural Resources or the Department of Conservation. I don’t remember who I called. But somebody came, trapped the bat, and safely released him somewhere else. I was never comfortable in that office again.
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Now, the other side of that coin. I fell in love with bats — or at least the idea of them — at the . Tucked away in a cove by the Missouri River in central Missouri, the cave is home to endangered Indiana bats and gray bats. It’s a cave with a large opening, so, over the years, it attracted hikers, some of whom came in and did damage to the habitat of the bats.
To protect the bats, the Department of Conservation built a large gate to keep the public out, but let the bats in and out. It was built by a specialist from Tennessee, with the slats of the gate designed in such a way as to not interfere with the wind patterns that helped guide the bats in and out at night. Healthy bat populations help keep mosquitos at bay. Since I was a small child, I’ve been a mosquito magnet, with bites sometimes swelling to the size of a silver dollar.
So, I like bats. Just as long as they aren’t alone in an office with me.
This brings me to the latest battle between man and beast: A wind farm built by Ameren Missouri in the northeastern part of the state is killing bats. The bats sometimes fly through the turbines, which has caused Ameren to turn them off at night. Now, as my colleague Bryce Gray reported on Sunday, the investor-owned monopoly utility wants consumers to pay for that shut down as part of its requested rate increase.
In a battle between bats and Ameren, I’m on the bats’ side. I first started writing about the utility company from that bat-infested office in the capital city, where, for as long as I’ve been in Missouri, the company generally gets what it wants from regulators and lawmakers. Whenever Ameren wants something, it plays the ultimate insiders game, lining up the lobbyists who used to be the regulators, or funding the campaigns of the lawmakers who want one of those regulator jobs when they are term-limited out of their seats.
The revolving door spun again just the other day, when the state’s economic development director, Rob Dixon, left Gov. Mike Parson’s administration to become the director of community and economic development for Ameren.
There, he’ll have to deal with the bat conundrum, where a company that once funded climate change denial campaigns, then pivoted to wind energy (a good thing, by the way), but built its turbines in a place where the scientists told them they would kill bats.
Now the bats are dying, and the turbines aren’t working full time, and, well, somebody has to pay for this avoidable error.
Ameren wants it to be consumers. The office that represents those of us who are customers of the utility, has a different opinion. “Ratepayers should not be responsible for any costs related to Ameren’s poor managerial decisions in electing to site its wind farm where it did,†Geoff Marke, the chief economist with the Missouri Office of Public Counsel, told Gray.
Of course, since the time that bat buzzed my head more than a decade ago, Ameren has successfully weakened the office of the OPC, and stacked the decks in its favor when it comes to rate increases. If I were a betting man, I’d say we end up paying for the idle wind turbines, which were the right investment in the wrong place.
I just hope the regulators protect the bats. My supply of calamine lotion is running low.