I am writing on behalf of the city of Willmar Municipal Utilities in response to the Big Stone II Question and Answer opinion page feature ("A full-tilt battle over electricity," July 6).

In the e-mail exchange, Michael Noble of Fresh Energy claims to know something about the electric energy needs of towns in Minnesota. He does not. Even if Willmar is able to achieve the 1.5 percent per year energy conservation goal established by the 2007 Minnesota Legislature, which we are in good faith setting out to do, electric consumption in Willmar will continue to grow. In addition, we need to replace a current 30 megawatt power purchase contract with another utility that will expire in 2015, and will likely not be able to be renewed. Accordingly, we are interested in securing a 30 megawatt share of Big Stone II to, in part, replace that contract. If we are not able to secure this source of energy, Willmar Municipal Utilities will be forced to either purchase energy from a natural gas generation source or from the MISO regional open market. Either of these options will cause a substantial increase of the energy costs for the citizens of Willmar.

Noble also makes the statement that "no responsible voice is talking about the electric system crashing, and no one is talking about round-the-clock baseload natural gas plants." Where has he been? That is all that the leaders of utilities in this area have been talking about. I personally am extremely concerned about what will happen if we are not able to add baseload generation like Big Stone II to the grid as fast as we can. The electric grid's "gusset plates" are bending and it is our responsibility to make sure that they do not break. Noble's sound-bite statements and inaccurate generalizations will certainly not fix them. I am completely bewildered how all the people who oppose this project can believe that they are doing a good thing when in reality all they are doing is making sure that the gusset plates do fail and the electric grid falls down with devastating economic impact.

Noble's comments belittle the needs of "small towns in Minnesota." Well, this small Minnesota town of 18,500 citizens needs modern, new baseload generation facilities like Big Stone II, in addition to our significant renewables and energy conservation efforts, to ensure our future.

BRUCE GOMM, WILLMAR, MINN.; GENERAL MANAGER, WILLMAR MUNICIPAL UTILITIES