Legalectric

Note this is an old map - I pulled it up at the Windfinder site and this is what it looks like today:

Anyway, the news from Friday is that the Obama Administration and some, but NOT all, of the Great Lakes States signed a Memorandum of Understanding, oh, also many federal agencies, like U.S. Fish & Wildlife.

I think this is an important step.  Lake Superior is too deep, but Lake Michigan and Lake Erie are the ones I’ve heard most often discussed as having high potential, and what’s particularly good about it is that they’re right near load centers.  Offshore would remove the “too close to neighbors” health concerns that are a significant issue.  But as with the Delaware Bluewater project, the environmental work needs to be done, and I hope it’s done more thoroughly than for on-shore wind.  What are infrasound impacts on marine life?  I’d asked Rick James, I.N.C.E., about this when he was here a couple years ago, and he hadn’t heard of any research on this point.  Hmmmmmm… big gap.

Google of  “impacts of infrasound on marine life”

So there’s a start… An interesting one is “The effects of human-generated sound on fish” which among other thing notes that it’s been suggested that birds use infrasound for migration, the waves bouncing of geological features!

Anyway, here’s the Memorandum of Understanding:

Great Lakes Offshore Wind Energy Consortium Memorandum of Understanding

And the Press Release:

Press Release (cut & pasted!)

Note that Wisconsin did NOT sign, which is consistent with WPPI’s testimony in the CapX 2020 Hampton-Rochester-LaCrosse docket that they want to get their RPS wind from outside WI, despite the fact that the model assumptions include an estimated 103,757 MW of wind generation potential at or above 30% capacity and 20,741 MW at or above 35% capacity, not including any Lake Michigan development.  Despite this potential in Wisconsin, his testimony was that he had his heart set on getting their RPS from west of Wisconsin!  His own Burns & McDonnell study, Exhibit 2, said:

If our understanding of current transmission planning results is correct, it is generally more expensive (than this breakeven indication) to build additional power transfer capability over such a long distance.  There may be other reasons that could justify such a build0out, but capacity factor differential alone does not.

Well DUH!

Here’s his testimony and Exhibits, worth a look:

Noeldner WPPI Direct Testimony

Noeldner - Exhibit 2 - Wind Economics Study & Model Produced for WPPI Energy

Noeldner - Exhibit 3 - Wind Assessment Model Results (see fn. 6)

The T. Boone Pickens’ AWA Goodhue Wind Project proposed for Goodhue County is headed to the Appellate Court… again.

Goodhue Wind Truth - Appeal II

Coalition for Sensible Siting - Appeal II

Here we go!!!

Why again???  Ask the PUC — they sent around a bogus memorandum pushing to appeal in September, we did, and said, “Hey, Appellate Court, look what they’re saying, can you believe it?” and the Appellate Court said, “PUC, what ever do you think you’re doing?  APA rules do not pre-empt your own rules about appeal, DUH!”

PUC Memorandum saying FILE APPEAL NOW OR ELSE!

Appellate Court Order to Dismiss - November 1, 2011

They’re worth a read to see how convoluted and brazen the PUC’s push was.  The Court agreed with us and said the PUC was so egregious that hey, don’t worry about it, when you refile at the appropriate time, NO CHARGE!!!  As it should be.

O…  M…   D!

Gov. Mark Dayton has done it again, apparently looking to leave a legacy of being one of the most environmentally harmful Governors in Minnesota history.

And to think he’s a shep guy…

What’s this all about?  Well, for example, first there was his roll and cave on MPCA and DNR permitting, “streamlining” or gutting, as the case may be, beating the Republicans and their legislative agenda to the punch:

Dayton “streamlines” for corporate interests!

And then adding insult to injury:

Walton’s Bill Grant - Deputy Commissioner of Energy?

Now, by Executive Order, he does it again, this time to the EQB:

Executive Order 11-32

Check it out:

By November 15, 2012, the EQB shall evaluate and make recommendations on how to improve environmental review, given the changes made in Chapter 4, House File 1, and the recommendations contained in the Office of the Legislative Auditor Environmental Review and Permitting Report.

Here’s Chapter 4,  House File 1.

And now for the Office of the Legislative Auditor Environmental Review and Permitting Report:

Legislative Auditor’s Report - Environmental Review & Permitting

Questionairre Results from Project Proposers

Questionnaire Results from Project Commentors

Anyone who is alert and oriented knows Scott Olson was seriously wounded by Oakland Police last week.  Scott Olson is a common name here in the Midwest, I’ve been working with a Scott Olson on the Susquehanna-Roseland transmission line.  But no, this is a different Scott Olson.

Turns out Occupy Oakland’s Scott Olson is the nephew of George Nygaard, a Viet Nam veteran, long-time energy activist and the transmission cohort who is handling the CETF intervention against CapX 2020’s Hampton to Rochester to LaCrosse line.  Scott had been in Madison weighing in on the Walker regime, got active with Iraq Veterans Against the War and Veterans for Peace, and got involved with the Occupy movement in San Francisco and then Oakland.

The Nation: How the Wounding of a Vet Who Dared to Dissent Stirred a New Wave of Dissent

George has been interviewed a few times about this:

Olsen’s uncle George Nygaard, reached by telephone in Chaseburg, Wis., expressed disgust at the police handling of the situation.

“There had to be a more civil way of meeting the challenge of dealing with these people who wanted to occupy that space than to kick people’s heads around when they have valid concerns about society, what we’re doing and where we’re going,” he said.

And from CNN:

Injured Iraq veteran is face of Occupy movement

October 28, 2011|By Moni Basu, CNN

A vigil is held for Marine Lance Cpl. Scott Olsen, who was injured during an Occupy movement protest in California.

The chaotic scene unfolded with flash-bang grenades, rubber bullets and clouds of smoke. Canisters whizzed through the air amid deafening booms.

Marine Lance Cpl. Scott Olsen went down.

“Medic! Medic!” someone yelled.

Olsen, 24, had seen his share of war in two tours of Iraq as a Marine. He was lucky, returning home physically unscathed.

But Tuesday evening, near the corner of 14th Avenue and Broadway in Oakland, California, Olsen went down.

The video images went viral: streams of crimson flowing down Olsen’s head, his black T-shirt adorned with a white dove of peace, the war veteran carried to a hospital.

And with that, the Occupy movement had a face.

“We are all Scott Olsen,” declared its website.

“It’s ironic,” said his uncle George Nygaard, that Olsen should be the poster child for this movement.

Ironic, said Olsen’s Marine buddy and current roommate Keith Shannon, that a young man who fought for American freedoms should be injured exercising those same freedoms at home.

He was 14 at the time of the September 11 attacks and graduated in 2005 from Onalaska High School with the same sense of patriotism that drove so many young men and women to join the military.

He was working at Lindy’s Subs and Salads when he decided to enlist. Soon, he was in Twentynine Palms in the Mojave Desert for training and the next year on his way to war.

Olsen deployed twice with the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment to Iraq’s Anbar province, site of some the war’s fiercest battles.

Shannon said they often encountered makeshift bombs in their 2006 tour during which 15 of their fellow Marines died.

Nygaard said Olsen told him about a couple of close calls, one in which he rolled over a roadside bomb that somehow failed to detonate.

Olsen had always been a quiet, shy kid, Nygaard said. A computer whiz, not a jock. And not the type of young man his friends had expected to become an activist.

But war touched Olsen as it does almost everyone who comes that close.

After his last tour of Iraq, he returned home with serious misgivings and gravitated to Nygaard, a former Marine himself who had returned from Vietnam feeling similarly.

In small-town Wisconsin, uncle and nephew talked to each other about the larger issues of war.

“He came back thinking there were better ways to deal with things than war,” Nygaard said.

Olsen’s parents, Nygaard said, didn’t always understand the change in their son. But Nygaard felt an affinity for the young man.

“I am so much more proud of him now than when he was in (the Marine Corps), because he followed through on his convictions,” Nygaard said.

Those convictions led Olsen to Madison this year to join protests of a bill by Gov. Scott Walker to weaken organized labor in Wisconsin.

“Scott thought the workers were getting screwed,” said Nygaard, who was on the streets with his nephew.

This summer, Olsen’s friend Shannon helped him get a job at OPSWAT, a technology firm in San Francisco.

By then, Olsen had become deeply involved with Veterans for Peace and Iraq Veterans Against the War. At one event, he stood with a poster that read: “32 veterans will try to commit suicide every day and 18 will succeed.”

“He worried deeply about his fellow brothers and sisters who are veterans,” Nygaard said.

That’s what prompted him to join the Occupy movement, first in San Francisco and then across the bay in Oakland, Nygaard said. Olsen knew there were many veterans among America’s down and out.

For the past three weeks, he was working during the day and out all night at the Occupy protests, Shannon said. He came home only three or four times to the Daly City apartment the two shared — mainly to do laundry.

Still, the laid-back Olsen was never a screamer. He felt strongly about economic injustice and wanted to add his voice quietly to the fight.

And so, Tuesday night, he was standing there, almost at parade rest, when he went down, witnesses said.

He suffered a skull fracture and was in fair condition in the intensive care unit at Highland Hospital, a hospital spokesman said.

Shannon and Nygaard said Olsen was conscious and communicating by writing on a notepad. Shannon said he has been told Olsen has asked to see him, but doctors have limited visitors. Olsen’s parents were with him at the hospital.

Meanwhile, Oakland police are investigating how Olsen was hurt. Protesters gathered for a vigil in his name.

National outcry over police treatment of the protesters — many others were injured or sickened by tear gas — prompted Oakland Mayor Jean Quan to take responsibility for those who were hurt.

And Scott Olsen became a household name.

But back in Chaseburg, Wisconsin, Nygaard worried for his nephew.

Concussions, he said, can come back to haunt you, even after you get over the bruises. A lot of veterans know that from Iraq and Afghanistan, where head injuries have been common. Only Olsen’s luck ran out here, in America. Nygaard just hopes his nephew will recover to tell his own story.

Farmageddon: The Unseen War on American Family Farm has 2 Minneapolis screenings this weekend.

Sat, Oct 15, 1pm at St. Anthony Main
and
Sun, Oct 16, 3pm at Bryant Lake Bowl

The Saturday showing will be followed by a special panel discussion and Q & A.

Panelists include:

• Sarah Anderson, Minnesota State Representative - 43A, author of the Minnesota Raw Milk Access Bill .
• Kathryn Niflis Johnson, BSN, RN, natural health educator, Optimal Health Connection
• Diane Miller, Minnesota attorney, co-founder National Health Freedom Coalition/Action
• Paul Reese, Minnesota grass-based dairy farmer
• Tracy Singleton, owner of Birchwood Cafe

In a large part, this is about raw milk, and what agencies are doing in their “regulation.”

From the Press Kit, here’s her SYNOPSIS:

Americans’ right to access fresh, healthy foods of their choice is
under attack. Farmageddon tells the story of small, family farms
that were providing safe, healthy foods to their communities and
were forced to stop, sometimes through violent action, by agents of
misguided government bureaucracies, and seeks to figure out why.

Filmmaker Kristin Canty’s quest to find healthy food for her four
children turned into an educational journey to discover why access
to these foods was being threatened. What she found were policies
that favor agribusiness and factory farms over small familyoperated
farms selling fresh foods to their communities. Instead of
focusing on the source of food safety problems — most often the
industrial food chain — policymakers and regulators implement and
enforce solutions that target and often drive out of business small
farms that have proven themselves more than capable of producing
safe, healthy food, but buckle under the crushing weight of
government regulations and excessive enforcement actions.

Farmageddon highlights the urgency of food freedom,
encouraging farmers and consumers alike to take action to preserve
individuals’ rights to access food of their choice and farmers’
rights to produce these foods safely and free from unreasonably
burdensome regulations. The film serves to put policymakers and
regulators on notice that there is a growing movement of people
aware that their freedom to choose the foods they want is in
danger, a movement that is taking action with its dollars and its
voting power to protect and preserve the dwindling number of
family farms that are struggling to survive.